Searching For Santa

(In the Strangest of Places)

This holiday season did not get off to a sparkling start.

The family Christmas tree decorating event, our first in Italy, was marred by technical difficulties. Even with a travel adaptor, it appears that American Christmas tree lights do not work well—or at least not for long—when plugged into an Italian socket. We’re lucky we didn’t blackout the entire village.

I will acknowledge that my words and actions that evening were more reflective of the spirit of Tax Day than of Christmas.

Not our Christmas scenario. Not this year..

So maybe it was a subconscious desire to “regain my childlike wonder in the magic of the holidays” (as the website puts it) that prompted my visit to Il Regno di Babbo Natale (The Kingdom of Santa Claus). Or perhaps it was my unshakeable New York skepticism.

After all, I had it from very good sources that Santa Claus lived in Rovaniemi, Finland, which seemed a suitably frigid yet bucolic place for Father Christmas to reside. It was hard to imagine that his true kingdom was located somewhere outside of the small town of Vetralla, Italy. I needed to see that for myself.

The Vetralla I know is a lovely village, with elegant palazzos like the one restored by my friend Mary Jane Cryan, a vibrant international community, and a wonderful young opera company. But it doesn’t feel like a place that would be home to Santa Claus.

After all, this isn’t even the Alps. It’s the scrappy, rolling countryside of Lazio, only about two hours outside of Rome, with its olive groves, patches of forest, and farm sheds made of brown tuff stone and corrugated steel. The abandoned farmhouses that dot the green pastures are covered with graffiti. You’re much more likely to come across a farmer in a fake Fendi sweatsuit than anyone who resembles Babbo Natale.

In fact,Il Regno di Babbo Natale is located on the outskirts of Vetralla in a frazione called La Botte, next to a swimming pool showroom and a paint factory. It appears that Babbo was not able to command prime real estate for his kingdom. As I entered the parking lot, I noted that it was hedged with green palms, which is not something you see in Finland.

Nevertheless, Santa’s Italian fiefdom apparently has its supporters. Billing itself a little too accurately as “a cult spot for Christmas lovers”, it claims to host over 600,000 visitors a year from all over the world. It’s s no simple Christmas village. It’s a whole holiday universe, with a cast of characters, narratives, and a topography of fantasy locales. It’s books, videos, soundtracks, an amusement park and souvenirs. A mega-store of souvenirs.

This Yuletide fever dream is the inspiration of Giorgio Onorato Aquilani, who with the help of his family (Stefania, Anna and Enrico) started Il Regno di Babbo Natale in 2012 from a small holiday decoration store in what could have been a garage. From a passion to share the joy of Christmas and a childhood spent watching way too much Disney Channel, Il Regno di Babbo Natale was born.

As I approached the doors of the Kingdom last Friday morning, all seemed peaceful in paradise. A handful of Italian parents huddled near the Jingle Bar, dressed for the Arctic in their fur-trimmed, white puffy jackets, designer sunglasses and tasseled stocking caps, even if it was almost 60 degrees outside. While the children toddled around in their snowsuits, the adults downed one last coffee and smoked one more cigarette before surrendering to their inner child and plunging into the magical Christmas aura.

A man dressed as a toy soldier guards the entrance to the Doors of Christmas like the Swiss Guards protecting the Vatican. Hesitantly pulling aside the velvet curtain, he hid his apology behind some half-hearted Christmas cheer. The Enchanted Forest where Babbo dwells wasn’t open yet he explained— the Great Leader apparently ruling in absentia at the moment. He suggested that I start by seeing The Ice Tunnel, and Dr. Krampy’s Coal Factory, where they make the coal for the bambini cattivi. Then I was welcome to do a bit of shopping in the gift store. Babbo would be by later.

Oh sure.

It’s easy to be cynical in a place like The Kingdom of Babbo Natale. Stepping into the flash and dazzle of the Ice Tunnel, I was immediately confronted by a Christmas tree decked out in ornaments of Buddy 100% Elfetto, one of the empire’s leading men. With the K-pop-sounding theme song working its way like a drill press into my ear, I was pretty sure I had already figured out what this place was all about. My snark was circling and ready to bite.

Until…as if on cue from every Hallmark Christmas movie ever made… the children began to filter in, having weaned their parents away from the bar at last. Sweet Cindy Lou Who faces stared wide-eyed into a winter wonderland and what could the Grinch do but crack a smile, remembering a time when some spray-on snow and a glitter gun was enough to transport us to an imaginary world. The kids weren’t even complaining that in the Kingdom of Babbo Natale, Santa had gone AWOL. That was all me.

“Here you begin the magic journey to see the world through the eyes of a child,” the sign over the door said, and I tried. I really did, even as the magic journey led straight into the gift store: a multi-shop complex hawking Giorgio Aquilani’s latest book, “Lucy the Star and the Secret to Natalloween” (a rather bold attempt to hijack another holiday), Christmas trees, a thousand types of tinsel, even pajamas. There was a whole room devoted to Christmas tree lights, but I knew that would really set me off.

I did pick up something in the presepi shop, where the shelves are lined with rows of farm stalls and mangers in which to set Mary and Joseph in the traditional scene. I noticed that many of the miniature sheds meant to depict Bethlehem around 6 BC bear a distinct resemblance to the lean-to’s and stone houses outside in La Botte. Maybe that’s the point: a reminder that indeed, the Mediterranean has a claim on Christmas as well.

Ironically, it’s in the Victorian Village outside the gift store where the Italian-ness of the enterprise begins to assert itself. In what feels more like an Alpine baita than anything from Dickens, there’s an exhaustive line-up of food shops. Not just candy stores, but shops selling what the Italians lovingly dub “prodotti tipici”: tartufo sauces, pasta ragus, and of course panettones. There’s a separate chocolatier, a butcher, and a place for dried fruit and nuts. So while the parents picked up Pecorino Romano and pandoras, the kids watched a red Ferrari zoom around a toy Formula One racetrack or took rides on the Fantazze, nestled inside giant espresso cups that swung back and forth faster than those on the Jingle Bar counter earlier that morning.

I myself was just settling into a ciambella fritta, the Roman version of a fried donut, when suddenly it was showtime: the moment of the Christmas Parade. A group of female elves, commandeered from their role as sales clerks and curtain-keepers, suddenly transformed into Babbo Natale’s crew of back-up dancers, while the male elf played the hype man to an eager, if slightly baffled audience. Now I understood why Santa had been indisposed earlier. Obviously, this was his moment to make a suitably theatrical entrance, surrounded by frolicking Elfetti.

But instead, we got a production number dedicated to “Natalloween”, with the poor girls performing choreography somewhere between an amateur Nutcracker and the Rockettes, all the while holding jack-o-lanterns over their heads. Lucy La Stella, a golden Christmas star in what might have been a repurposed Spongebob costume, bopped in the background.

If the opening number left the audience a little confused, the show closed with a bang. A semi-original song that borrowed the “Hey ho, Let’s Go!” hook of the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop” led to what I can only describe as a mosh pit for 7 year olds, with the Elfetti leading a group dance party clearly intended to distract everyone from the obvious underlying questions:

Where was Babbo Natale anyway? Did he really miss his own parade?

The preferred lunch at Il Regno di Babbo Natale.

Only after lunch had been served did the word filter through the crowd: the Kingdom was now fully open for business. Perhaps Babbo Natale is a late-riser. Given his line of work, I could understand that.

Still, as I made my way through the labyrinth of the Enchanted Forest to what should have been the receiving line, it seemed remarkably quiet on the throne. In fact, I couldn’t see Santa anywhere. Rounding corner after corner, I eventually ran into the last of the Elfetti, patrolling yet another curtain— the one I assumed to be the exit.

“Babbo Natale’s not here?” I asked, with an unexpectedly plaintive tone that must have come from somewhere deep in my childhood. “Ma si!”she answered, with that exaggerated bonhomie that infects almost anyone wearing striped tights and a tall hat. “Behind this curtain,” she said, and tugged temptingly on the green velvet drape that marked the entrance to a private audience with the Boss himself.

Seriously? Another curtain? I’ve had better luck making it into VIP rooms at New York nightclubs. “Would you like to join the line?” the elf asked, with an eyebrow raised ever so slightly.

At that moment, I realized that getting in touch with my inner child had its limits. Now that I knew Babbo was in there, seeing him in person didn’t seem so important after all. When a group of third-graders fired up on pasta and fries pushed past me, I stepped back in retreat. I didn’t even know what I wanted for Christmas this year anyway.

Leaving the Enchanted Forest against the flow of traffic, I did note that one couple even older than me had brought the whole family to see Santa: six chihuahuas in matching sweaters.

Back in the now abandoned Victorian Village, I munched on an apple fritter and pondered the meaning of it all. My mind turned to a young man in the periferia of a small, isolated village, inheriting his family’s holiday decoration shop, but dreaming of something much bigger: stories and silly theme songs and characters and spettacoli. I imagined him trying to convince his family that people would come to this quiet little place that hardly ever sees snow to celebrate the biggest of the winter holidays.

Maybe there’s something to that holiday magic after all.

Wishing all of you a wonderful season. May your days be merry and bright, and all your tree lights stay lit.

Tanti Auguri from Italy, and remember: only 322 more days until Natalloween.