Buon Natale e Tanti Auguri!

Christmas finally arrived and I celebrated in Italian style. Claudia’s family and I shared a full course meal, with appetizers, entrees, first courses, second courses, side dishes, fruit with mascarpone, and desserts. There was more food readily available than any of us could consume, and Claudia’s mother even provided us all with menus to prepare us for the gustatory delights she had in store.

Though Claudia and her cousins (and there weren’t many of them despite our stereotypes of Italian families) are all in their late twenties or thirties, none of them were married, none were in long-term relationships, and none had children or plans for them in the near future. It seemed so strange to me. At home, my older cousins and I all date people and often bring them along to family parties on the holidays. Though just in our young twenties, all of us have graduations in our near futures and general ideas for careers not too far ahead. With an average Italian college graduation age in the late twenties, I suppose Claudia and her cousins should not have surprised me. The vast majority of Claudia’s high school friends are not married or engaged, and the only one with a child had caused a scandal when she became pregnant during her final year in high school. I have heard that the birth rate in Italy is negative and now it seems much more understandable. The culture really seems to hold young people in an awkward sort of limbo for longer than is biologically advantageous or advisable.

Linguistically, I was thoroughly amused to realize that in Italian, it is not only acceptable but normal to refer to your aunt or uncle as just “Aunt” or “Uncle.” In fact, no one addresses aunts or uncles as Aunt/Uncle [insert name here]. And in Italian, it doesn’t sound fresh in front of one’s own grandmother to say things like, “the grandma wants the salt” or “the grandma needs a knife.” Even if no one else appreciated it, I still had to hold in a laugh or two. Sometimes things are just lost in translation.