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The places that are Enzo Bianchi traces of his memory, his feelings, his emotions: the house, fields, hills, the characters of Monferrato, but also as far afield as Santorini is reading ... discovered in His memories are our memories, his emotions are reflected in our ... Well I'm glad I read it and got a few friends and for this I recommend it to all, believers or not ... because Enzo Bianchi can speak to the hearts of all. This following is an excerpt, taken from "The days of the crib ", specifically the chapter that describes "the night prior " ie Christmas Eve, hoping to offer each of you a good excuse for a pause in the mad chase to shopping.
The night prior
For some 'for years to come Advent, I naturally wonder about the profound changes experienced in my lifetime, in a traditionally Christian country like Italy, the time before Christmas and I wonder: who is still able to experience Christmas in its dimension of mystery, faith event? In fact, even after the feast of All Saints and the memory of the dead - has become for many an impromptu carnival - Christmas is the festival promises to be laden by retailers, is the call to travel for shopping and gifts, looking for more food refined, new and expensive luxury to be shown off to the organization of "party", lasting at least until Epiphany. Now there is an ideology of Christmas and all concur that there is more shocked, you do not ask questions, do not feel challenged.
This, then, is indifferent to those that poverty takes away from the party falls into a frustrating and even more pronounced. But remember the poor when you are intent on enjoying the opulence and engage the consumer is now appraiser, if one dares to even ask the question if all that is necessary is judged, well the go, spoilsport. So we are unprepared to internalize the feast of Christmas and end up being catapulted into a celebration of where we can barely grab some shreds of meaning, miss the heart of the message.
The question is what do you think people today when he uses the term "supervision" of Christmas. Almost certainly think a day before the party, nothing more. Yet the word "eve, eve! He has a long history, has known different meanings over the centuries and in fact still have different meanings depending on how you live. I still live as a Christian and Monaco: yes, it means first before waking in the night, standing guard, so the stay awake and being vigilant, prepared, alert to what can happen. Jews already lived in the eve preparation parties, but especially with the advent of Christianity that affirms the eve marked by the watch in the night. In the Christian communities on Sunday (day, in fact, of the Lord), as witnessed by Pliny, was celebrated Lucem ante, "before sunrise" - that is, in the hours normally devoted to sleep-a liturgy in which they sang Christ almost Deo, "as a God." These vigils communities were soon called vigils.
the fourth century, then the monks, both in the East and West, they chose their last few hours of the night to watch and pray, waiting for the Lord Jesus Christ, thus affirming their faith in his coming in glory, one that came to be expected, relied on, accelerated. The monks still do today, before dawn, when it is still dark in his cell with his face that sometimes falls on the holy book of the Bible, or singing the Psalms together: they meditate, contemplate, pray for the coming of the day Groom, winner of death. Featuring songs that become particularly solemn and joyful dawn when the sun rose, the vigils are an experience you do with the whole body, not only with the mind. The eyes must remain open, the body has to rest, all the members must be in a state of vigilance ... This is why the movements that accompany and help the prayer, you get up up and then we bow, we prostrate or we sit and then stand up.
The church, made up of Christians and non-monks, knows this experience, and few Christians today who practice the vigil, to fight against sleep to stay awake while everyone else slept, to pray, think, sing the Lord. However, the church has always lived in the Easter Vigil, called by Augustine mater omnium sanctarum vigiliarum, "mother of all holy vigils, as has always celebrated the vigil on Christmas Eve, so the traditional" Midnight Mass "in when we remember the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. After the longest night of the year, when the morning sun begins to shorten the duration of darkness, the sun is the real Jesus Christ who is born and rises in the world to overcome the darkness of evil ...
But on the eve of Christmas did not exist anymore-everyone is busy outside the home, intent on crowding shops, to give and receive gifts, stunned by displays seductive, with lights that adorn the streets and trees, distracted by "Santa Claus", that is rigged from old youth whose painfully puppets descend from windows and balconies ... very different
Vigils those who for years have lived and still try to live! First of all households lived in the eve through the building, headed by the children of religious symbols: the crib and the tree Christmas, prepared for a long time but they found their moment in the day of completion of the work, receiving the loving care of family members that right next to the crib or deposed gifts under the tree. Gifts poor at the time of my childhood: dried chestnuts, some Mandarin, hazelnuts and chocolate, and sometimes, if there was some money in the family, a new dress ... still, however, an object that would be necessary and useful. As a boy I had the privilege of receiving a gift as well as books and told me: "Know that there is a season to read: winter."
The women of the house, however, lived the day before preparing lunch the next day: "the Christmas lunch, "they said. Often they helped each other, although different families, to cook the dishes in which each had specialized, as if every woman had her words of love and offered their ilo Christmas Day. In my house forever, even in great poverty after the war, the Christmas dinner was to be twelve courses, so maybe that's seven starters varied from year to year, but the dish could not always be essential that it was el ravioli. Pasta stuffed with seasoned meat with gravy, a dish that I prepare with my own hands even now to cheer me and those who live with their closest friends. To prepare the "ravioli" women sometimes also calls us children, particularly to separate from one another. Early in the morning they put on the stove to cook the three meats - veal braised beef, pork and rabbit stew - which were then crushed with the addition of boiled cabbage and squeezed, eggs, Parmesan cheese and a bit 'of marjoram that carefully dosed, gave a stinging delicious ravioli. This unique filling that we tasted of hidden children, was ordered placed in piles on sheets of pasta rolled thin which were then rolled up and crushed with your fingers, were the result of long strips to heavy taxes that we cut. Then the raviolis were taken to cool - usually in the bedroom, that was not heated, from where came the next day to be immersed in boiling water and then, once cooked and served, to arrive triumphantly to the table, after all the starters. Only then we could at last wish, "Bon appetit!" Because the starters, we are told, are eaten "just to be on the world."
And men? They continued to work as on other days, and only toward evening took home a strain, el success' d Nadal, the tangle of trunks and roots at the base of the trees cut and left to dry for a couple of years under the porch. A large strain that was put in the fireplace before everyone went to church for midnight mass: slowly burning would wait for the return of the owners late at night and would have welcomed them with its heat and light the fire to warm up a bit 'bodies cold. Then, along with a glass of moscato, we exchanged greetings, the gifts were opened and then went to bed. If the return was made by the log fire burning in rugged said: "Good thing, there will be peace in the family and neighbors", but if you are struggling to burn disconsolate said: Eh, this year will not be so well ... "
I do not think it was more as it was lived before the Christian then, but it certainly was wiser: simple things, poor customs knew precious hours of waiting and were an exercise of faith in life, in the future, in the other. But more specifically Christian dimension of the festival do not forget that prayer on Christmas Eve, the intensity of which is untranslatable in Italian, asking reviewed Nativity breathe : "Grant us, O God, to breathe the Birth of your Son we are celebrating."
From the book: "Everything in its season" by Enzo Bianchi. Edited by Einaudi Borders
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