Friday, March 19, 2004
March 19
Today is Father’s Day, not in the vulgarised American tradition of ‘pick a Sunday in part of the year when Hallmark doesn’t sell many cards and invent a day to ‘honour’ your male parent, but because it’s Saint Joseph’s day. Nit picking Bible buffs may say that Joseph wasn’t the biological father of the Baby Jesus, but that is only a minor detail here. More importantly Saint Joseph is the patron saint of working men, which resonates more strongly in Naples than elsewhere in the peninsula. Certainly, I would rather that the day celebrated the man who was Christ’s adoptive father than somewhere in June between ‘Thank you for being my pet day’ and ‘Happy haircut’ day. Perhaps there is a movement in America to outlaw Fathers’ Day as it denigrates single mothers. I don’t care. What is of immediate importance is that the bars are selling a special bun to celebrate the festa of San Giuseppe. It’s a sort of baba, with cream and cherries. I don’t think Nazareth had patisseries like Naples, but then no doubt there is a folktale somewhere that tells of Joseph being a Neapolitan.
A survey in the paper asked how many Italians believed in reincarnation. Actually it was phrased as ‘Would you like to come back as a tree’ which seemed a little biased against our Buddhist friends. The answer was 4%. Not that surprising in a Catholic country, where the Church can barely sanction, let alone promote, the idea that purgatory may only be a stopping point on the way to the heavenly garden centre.
More telling was the fact that 74% of respondents would come back as a man, with only 12 % as a women, which is proof, it were needed, of the balance of Italian society, and may account for the fact that father’s day has a special bun whereas the festa delle donne has some rather nasty yellow weeds as its symbol.
Now spring has arrived I find myself starting to explore areas of the city which have thus far been a closed book to me. As the weather is warmer and the evenings are steadily lengthening, I have ample time and opportunity to wander at will around the city. Having avoided churches for the first six months of my stay, I now discover my feet leading me into some. It’s not difficult. Naples must have more churches per square kilometer than any other city. For those disposed to cross themselves as they pass churches and shrines, such actions must be done almost continually leading the casual observer to think the religious one is in the early stages of Parkinson disease.
Amongst the proliferation of Baroque temples there are a handful of churches that haven’t suffered at the hands of the restorers. The Neapolitans obviously gathered the baroque style to their collective bosom, as its more colourful and busier than the more spare, formal Gothic which predated it. Exuberant is a word that springs to mind. But then so is overblown kitsch confection. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.
Today is Father’s Day, not in the vulgarised American tradition of ‘pick a Sunday in part of the year when Hallmark doesn’t sell many cards and invent a day to ‘honour’ your male parent, but because it’s Saint Joseph’s day. Nit picking Bible buffs may say that Joseph wasn’t the biological father of the Baby Jesus, but that is only a minor detail here. More importantly Saint Joseph is the patron saint of working men, which resonates more strongly in Naples than elsewhere in the peninsula. Certainly, I would rather that the day celebrated the man who was Christ’s adoptive father than somewhere in June between ‘Thank you for being my pet day’ and ‘Happy haircut’ day. Perhaps there is a movement in America to outlaw Fathers’ Day as it denigrates single mothers. I don’t care. What is of immediate importance is that the bars are selling a special bun to celebrate the festa of San Giuseppe. It’s a sort of baba, with cream and cherries. I don’t think Nazareth had patisseries like Naples, but then no doubt there is a folktale somewhere that tells of Joseph being a Neapolitan.
A survey in the paper asked how many Italians believed in reincarnation. Actually it was phrased as ‘Would you like to come back as a tree’ which seemed a little biased against our Buddhist friends. The answer was 4%. Not that surprising in a Catholic country, where the Church can barely sanction, let alone promote, the idea that purgatory may only be a stopping point on the way to the heavenly garden centre.
More telling was the fact that 74% of respondents would come back as a man, with only 12 % as a women, which is proof, it were needed, of the balance of Italian society, and may account for the fact that father’s day has a special bun whereas the festa delle donne has some rather nasty yellow weeds as its symbol.
Now spring has arrived I find myself starting to explore areas of the city which have thus far been a closed book to me. As the weather is warmer and the evenings are steadily lengthening, I have ample time and opportunity to wander at will around the city. Having avoided churches for the first six months of my stay, I now discover my feet leading me into some. It’s not difficult. Naples must have more churches per square kilometer than any other city. For those disposed to cross themselves as they pass churches and shrines, such actions must be done almost continually leading the casual observer to think the religious one is in the early stages of Parkinson disease.
Amongst the proliferation of Baroque temples there are a handful of churches that haven’t suffered at the hands of the restorers. The Neapolitans obviously gathered the baroque style to their collective bosom, as its more colourful and busier than the more spare, formal Gothic which predated it. Exuberant is a word that springs to mind. But then so is overblown kitsch confection. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.
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