A Triumph of Hope...

Man plans. God laughs.

Anyone who ever planned a family ski vacation is familiar with that ironic bit of  Yiddish wisdom. And if that’s what the chosen people are telling each other, things might be even worse than we thought.

Theologically, I don’t believe that God is actively thwarting our efforts so much as finding amusement in our determination to  force something that on a particular day is simply not in the stars. Like Stan and Ollie pushing the piano up the stairs, the harder we try, the funnier it is. You can hardly blame Him or Her for the occasional guffaw.

This year, we spent Easter in New York, so Easter Monday passed without notice. Aside from being a day when children crash land from Sunday’s jellybean sugar high, in America the Monday after Easter has no particular significance. But in Italy, it is the day of Pasquetta, a national holiday dedicated primarily to—of all things— the picnic.

It may seem strange that in a country in which outdoor dining is possible from April through October,  only one specific day should be set aside for a picnic. The holiday seems to be rooted in a post-World War II desire among city dwellers to spend a day in the countryside. It’s not immediately clear why they all need to spend the same day in the countryside.

Pasquetta plays out in a number of scenarios:  an epic frenzy at the supermarket on the Saturday before Easter (do not attend this without proper training); Monday morning traffic jams on backwood roads paved in a winter’s worth of sheep manure; and ultimately, dozens of families lined up side by side, all asserting territorial claims to a small plot of grass in a farmer’s muddy field.

And that’s if everything goes right. But it never goes right.  Here’s the comic twist of Pasquetta:

It always rains.

In the land of “O Sole Mio”, where the national weather map is often nothing but yellow smiley faces scattered from North to South promising yet another day in paradise, Easter Mondays are inevitably cold, wet, and entirely unsuitable for a picnic. Most are drizzly from start to finish. The cruelest ones dawn bright and  clear, only to gradually grey screen into a midday storm.

Was that thunder, or just God cracking himself up?

Being American, we feel comfortable skipping the Pasquetta ritual rain-out.  We have enough of our own inexplicable holiday traditions,  like buying a mattress on President’s Day. We love our picnics, but prefer to take them on an impromptu basis.

My favorite Italian picnic happened several years ago,  on an unseasonably warm day in February. Recognizing the moment, we packed some essentials and walked up the winding path near our house. We were soon joined by a small brown dog taking an unaccompanied stroll to the neighbor’s farm.

We all sat together by the side of the road, overlooking the whole valley. From our sun-brushed perch, we  watched winter’s sepia landscape morph before our eyes into the green grass and red poppies of spring. We still occasionally run into Little Brown Dog around the neighborhood, and he always seems pleased to see us. We wonder if he remembers our picnic lunch together on that midwinter afternoon.

Of course, Pasquetta is not the only holiday that goes wrong more often than it goes right. Those of us who dream of a white Christmas sometimes get our wish, then wind up marooned for 12 hours at  Detroit airport, waiting for the deicer.

Especially for New Yorkers, New Year’s Eve is the ultimate over-promising, under-delivering holiday. In fact, for many years we would escape the Times Square super-sized mall concert and head for Italy, to celebrate with friends at a remote country inn called Contrada Durano.

One year, our post-Christmas trip to Contrada Durano required bailing out of a New York taxi in a blizzard—> hauling our luggage through the snow to a subway—>  racing to Penn Station—>  grabbing an Amtrak train to Washington DC. From Washington-Dulles, we caught the only  flight left to Europe.

By the time we made it to Italy 30 hours later, it was snowing there too. Jimmy, the intrepid proprietor of Contrada Durano, had to shuttle the guests from the main road up the impossibly steep hill in his pick-up truck.

But once we made it safely out of the storm, we were surrounded by an all-star cast of characters— some in black tie, one in Scottish tartan, another in his Royal British Navy uniform. We reunited with old acquaintances from Venice, London, and Switzerland. There was a masterpiece of a meal that ended at two in the morning with the traditional bowl of lentils.

Those New Year’s Eve parties at Contrada Durano were pure magic. No one who attended would hesitate to fly across the world for a chance to do it again

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It seems these crazy holiday traditions are embedded in our psyche, even when they fly in the face of all life experience. Somewhere in our primal brains, we can’t shake the desire to gather with family around the fireplace on a cold winter night,  mark the passing of a year with a celebration of better days ahead, or spend a spring afternoon in the countryside with a salami, some pecorino cheese, and Little Brown Dog.

God can laugh all He wants. We’ll keep trying.