Book of Days

There is a famous Norman Rockwell painting that first appeared on the August 30, 1947 cover of The Saturday Evening Post. It’s titled “Going and Coming,” and in the top half of the painting, a family is on their way to a grand day out. In the bottom half of the image we see the same family on their way back home. Everyone is all chipper and excited on their way out; on the way back they’re all beat and exhausted.

My family has an Italian saying that reminds me of this. We say it in the Lucerine dialect that my grandparents spoke, so keep in mind it’s not at all proper Italian but more an Italian Arabian mix, and I’m only taking a guess at the spelling. Like Norman Rockwell’s painting, it too has two parts. The first part goes, “Amai a festa!” This means “We’re going to the feast!” and we say the words with great excitement. And that’s quickly followed by the second part: “Amaiutt’a festa.” This means “We went to the feast” and we say those words with great exhaustion, quietly and slowly. It seems Norman Rockwell, as all-American as he was, may have known a few people from my grandparents’ small village in Italy, because this saying could very well have been the inspiration for his painting. Going to the feast may seem fun and exciting as you’re setting out to go, but once you’ve been there on your feet all day and night, battling the crowds, a shower and bed may be more in line with what you really want.

There were many saint’s feasts to choose from in my parents’ days growing up in Italian neighborhoods in Brooklyn, but the one they are mostly referring to in this old saying is the Feast of San Gennaro. He is St. Januarius but even in America he is mostly known by his Italian name of Gennaro. He is the patron saint of Naples, Italy, and when so many Napoletani migrated to New York at the turn of the last century, San Gennaro became big there, too. The first celebration of the Feast of San Gennaro on the streets of New York City was on his feast day, September 19, in 1926. Since then, it’s become Little Italy’s biggest and longest running feast. It’s been going on for quite a few days now, since the 10th of September, but tonight is the biggest night of the feast, and it all concludes tomorrow on the 20th.

My mother would go to the feast when she was a girl. She went for the music and the food and the cute boys, but she remembers also the procession with the statue of San Gennaro hoisted up on the shoulders of men. People would pin dollar bills to the saint’s cloak as he was paraded through the city streets, on his way to the church.

I was at one or two San Gennaro feasts when I was a little boy. What I remember most are lights strung up in the night sky, decorations that spanned from pole to pole above the street, sausages and peppers on crusty Italian bread, music and people all around me, and big balloons filled with sand that a kid like me could punch up and down into the air. The balloon was attached to my wrist with a rubber band and it was the best thing ever, at least to the me that was probably 7 years old at the time.

Is the Feast of San Gennaro still like this? I don’t know. Even though I feel like a kid most of the time, it’s a long time since I was seven. If you are at the feast this year, I’m counting on you to let me know. Tell me all about it. And if there are sand balloons, please tell me you bought one and punched the sky with it.

Image: Looking north down Mulberry Street in Little Italy during the San Gennaro Festival in 2014. To the right the Little Italy Bakery can be seen constructing what became the world’s largest cannoli. Photo by MusikAnimal, 20 September 2014, Creative Commons.