The high tide of the holidays has washed over the calendar, the budget, the crumpled handful of tomato-stained to-do and to-buy lists, and as the tide retreats into the new year, I thought I’d give a tiny review of the two weeks (it seems so much longer) just past.
After so many holiday seasons here, I don’t have much to say that’s new. Christmas, New Year, and the ineffable Befana have passed in orderly single file, and here we are, facing the next 12 months. The holidays don’t end on New Year’s Day, they drip on for another few days till the day after Epiphany, which my calendar says is dedicated to St. Raimondo de Penafort, who must be the patron saint of children going back to school.
How to beguile the dead-air space between New Year’s and Epiphany? The old-folks’ club of Castello East, which undertakes some very charming initiatives for the neighborhood kids, came up with a new idea this year. On Epiphany Eve (last Monday), they arranged for some of the carnival rides which are here for their annual two- to three-month stint, to open at 10:00 AM, and they were free for children up to 11 years old. I think it was a very likeable idea, even if not very many kids made it out into the sunshine from their festive lairs (fancy way of saying “beds”).