Holiday Cheer

So over-indulgence was the theme this Christmas. Stuck around here to see how the Italians do Christmas; turns out, they eat. I was going to head up to Rome to try and catch Midnight Mass at the Vatican (we were going to have to stand in St. Peter's Square since we couldn't get tickets to get inside), but around noon on Christmas Eve my landlord came by and invited me up for dinner that night. So I scrapped the Rome plans (sorry, Pope) to go experience a nice Neapolitan Christmas Eve family dinner. You may have noticed that in my previous descriptions of eating with Antonio, Patrizia, and the family, that they tend to give me a lot of food and cause me to be in great physical pain by the time I leave to come back downstairs. This was no exception. Apparently seafood is the big Night Before Christmas here, so we ate it for three-and-a-half hours. It was great, but they just kept giving me more and more. I did make their night, though, when I brought up their presents (both from myself and from my parents). My parents are apparently trying to give them a lifetime sugar buzz--all kinds of good old-fashioned American sweets. I think my parents in that one fell swoop might have actually topped the amount of sugar that Antonio and family have given me over the last 18 months.

Christmas dinner was also quite good--I hosted a bunch of friends from work for dinner here after I realized how many of us were going to be around during the holiday (because nothing is sadder than eating a 10 lb. ham and drinking a bottle of wine by yourself). We had about 12 or 14 people stop in over the course of the night; I cooked up the aforementioned ham and some sweet potatoes, and everyone brought some great stuff to eat (and drink) (and drink and drink and drink). It was really a nice way to get together and spend the holiday in the absence of actual family (although actual family did have a good time talking to each other and playing with our new webcams on Christmas night).