Palm Sunday

Much of Italy awakened this morning to the sound of church bells, easier to hear than usual because in Italy there is essentially no traffic. Bells in our neighborhood began to toll at 7, then again at 7:30, and by 8 from down the hill came the sounds of bells from Trastevere, normally not easy to hear. Our neighbors one building down said that they could pick out the deep toll of Santa Andrea della Valle, which is three kilometers away.  Their son had been baptized there, so they were especially emozionati (thrilled) saying it felt like a particular sign to them to continue to be courageous during this endless lock down. 

Today was Palm Sunday in Italy, the first sacred day in Holy Week, but there were no palm fronds or olive branches distributed in each church, no special masses to attend, no big multigenerational family lunches, no companionable chats in the bar with friends about where to go on holiday for the upcoming three-day Easter break.  

For the fourth Sunday in a row, 60 million Italians were home.

Our neighbors, great cooks and lovers of marvelous food, who taught me how to make a sublime carciofo alla guidea (artichoke in the Jewish style) had canned tuna and canned borlotti beans for Palm Sunday lunch, washed down with mineral water. They were busy on their terrace planting the numerous seedlings they had germinated during the first week of lock down.  Peppers, eggplants, three kinds of tomatoes, Genoa basil and zucchini were all carefully positioned in terra-cotta pots, watered, and moved into the sunniest spot.  They then turned on the television to see the last minutes of the Pope conducting the traditional Palm Sunday mass, broadcast from Saint Peter’s basilica where only fifteen or so celebrants were present, all spaced the minimum 1.5 meters one from the other.  

Cameraman did their filming in face masks.

My friend Maria Grazia, who lives a floor below us, took a branch of the potted olive tree that is on her terrace, and raised it to the television set as the Pope was blessing the worldwide congregation of faithful. “Tutto si puo’ fare !”, she WhatsApped me (“Everything is possible !)

Our mutual neighbor two floors below normally visits the fascist era church in our closest piazza twice a day. She went there quickly this morning. There were no masses there or anywhere else in Italy but a very short drop- in was permitted for personal prayer.

Today, priests across the country were prohibited from distributing olive branches or palm fronds, making today unique certainly in living Romans’ memory.

Everyone I know in Italy, believer or not, on Palm Sunday stops by a church and collects the branch or frond that are usually piled by the church door, and then hangs it somewhere in their bedroom, or tucks it into a wall calendar, or places it above the television. There for a year it stays.

For reasons of tradition or for reasons of faith, this is what one does. This year the Vatican suggested that, if you had no access to a branch of any kind, you simply reuse last year’s branch.

Because I so love olives, olive oil and olives trees, it always pained me a bit to see piles of olive branches on Palm Sunday. I worried about palm fronds too as such a significant number of Italy’s palm trees are afflicted by red palm weevil and are already skimpy.

It is too late in the season to prune olive trees (this happens in January and February in central and southern Italy and no later than early March in the north) so from the horticultural point of view, this slaughter of the branches is unjustifiable.

2020 however is a good year to be a palm or an olive as no one is divesting you of your branches. Easter 2020 should be a better time than in years past to be a lamb, as lunches will be considerably toned down, restaurants are shuttered, and most of my friends are not planning anything elaborate for the day. (“Spaghetti con pomodoro” said Alessandra in Palermo. And maybe a roast chicken and potatoes, if the children will peel the potatoes. I am fed up with peeling potatoes.”

Giocondo in Furore (Amalfi) received a gift from his neighbors across the stairs, a sweet homemade casatiello (a yeast bread, always ring-shaped, symbolic of the crown of thorns and always with an egg representing rebirth).

He remarked : “they left it for me with their auguri (best wishes.) My wish is the very best to everyone. May everyone be well.”

s.