This Christmas, to some degree, we’ll be different in most parts of the world – wherever it is celebrated at least – but, nevertheless, we don’t have to give up our Christmas spirit and we shall not forget that it is a time to spend at home anyway so, if we are lucky enough to have our family close to us (and I am), that should be enough to fill our hearts with joy.
Some people I know are not so lucky and we’ll need to spend their Christmas separated from their loved ones because of the different colors of the regions I explained in my previous blog: one in fact cannot go from a yellow region to an orange one or vice versa, only yellow regions have open “borders” at the moment.
The Christmas season starts here in Italy on December 8th. This day is called Immacolata and it’s a bank holiday. This year it fell on a Tuesday so Monday was a bank holiday too because here in Italy when a bank holiday falls on a Thursday or a Tuesday the following day (in case of Thursday) or the previous day (in case of Tuesday) is a holiday too…this is called ponte, meaning bridge because it connects two days of holiday.
The Immacolata is usually the day family use to do Christmas shopping and to decorate the Christmas tree together. It is a huge shopping day and shopping malls are usually so crowded it is virtually impossible to find a parking spot but this year the Italian decree was imposing shops and malls to remain closed on weekends and holidays and that means that shopping was cancelled.
So, we stuck to decorating the Christmas tree, drinking hot chocolate and eating cookies. What made the moment even more magical was doing it with the family of course.
According to the Christian religion, the Christmas tree is a symbol of hope.
Every city has one in the main square and most households make one.
In Italy we also have the tradition of adding some new homemade ornaments each year, made of whatever we can find around the house. Whether they are little angels made of dough, paper stars or snowmen made of cotton, it is possible to create Christmas decorations with your own hands.
The most traditional Italian ornaments are obviously made of……pasta of course! Obviously, not cooked pasta but dry pasta.
The decorations with pasta are a classic amongst the kindergarten projects for the Christmas period.
If you wish to try you need:
- different shapes of dry pasta
- hot glue
- spray cans of silver or gold paint
- ribbons, glitter, bells…
You can create:
A little angel: you can create it by gluing two overlapping orecchiette pasta for the head and add spaghetti pasta for the hair, macaroni pasta for the body, two pipes for the arms and a farfalle for the wings.
Stars: you can create it by simply gluing many penne pasta and then spraying with gold or silver;
A mini Christmas tree: cut out the shape of a tree on a cardboard and then glue many different shapes of pasta around the perimeter.
Our last Xmas tree ornament - Tree
Big snowflake: assemble penne pasta, each in contact with others and fix them well with glue. Next to them, attach other types of pasta such as farfalle or tortiglioni pasta pointing outwards. You can decorate this and all other ornaments with glitter and whatever you like.
Our last Xmas tree ornament - Snowflake
