Everybody! Sing-a-long!
Today is the Festa di San Gennaro. San Gennaro is the patron saint of Naples and twice a year, the Neapolitans expect his blood, which is kept in a container the looks a bit like a carpenter's level only gold, to liquefy. If it does, miracolo! No earthquakes, Vesuvius won't erupt. If it doesn't, batten down the hatches!
Luckily, it liquefied. Tuttapost. My friends and I missed the actual liquefication, which happened at 9:30am, but we got to see the Cardinal turn the level/lava lamp upside down and back again to show us that the miracle did indeed occur. The Cardinal looks like a panda bear and he had such an innocent smile on his face as he held the blood above our heads, to the music of our applauding hands. He looked like a little boy showing his family the new toy Santa brought him for Christmas.
I, Jewess-cynic, of course, cried. Then I took pictures, which I rarely do because I am a photographer's daughter. Here are two guys selling San Gennaro bracelets.
And a guy selling tooty things.
4 comments:
I never got to see that, and I wish I had. It is such a cool part of Napoli-lore.
That is one thing about Naples that I would love to see. One of these days we will visit in the Fall. Nice blog.
lol! my friend who is from naples his name is Gennaro....so he told me bout this feast! funny..I kinda didn't understand what he was saying about the blood and all...but now i get it! :) ciao
Oh, how fun. I arrived in Naples the day after you wrote this and was so sorry that I missed the festa.
I was staying in a cute little B&B on the lungomare, because I like to be near where my grandparents caught the boat for America. It sounds like you live directly up from there.
If only I'd known about you, we could have had an espresso! My husband is Jewish and I enjoyed reading about your experiences. My cousins in Calabria find him fascinating and are reading Jewish novels in translation to better understand his culture.
In my italian-American family, they think that being Jewish is the closet thing to being Italian (without being Catholic of course). My mother sort of picked my husband out for me, in fact.
Anyway, love your blog, will stop by again.
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