Italian Christmas

          "...it was many years ago, in 1962. I can remember it very well because it snowed a lot. I attended the second year in middle school and we were studying ILIAD with our Italian teacher. The war between Trojans and Achaeans.

After the Mass, that Christmas we decided for a date in the afternoon to play snowballs.

In the first hours after lunch, we met in a clearing in the neighbourhoods outside our village. We split up in the two usual teams: one was composed of kids from the residential area and the other, where I was, of kids from the country. There had always been a great competition between the two teams, made up of 15 boys each. Challenges were usually imitations of western films, with fights between outlaws and Indians, but that year the study of Iliad and the passion of our Italian teacher made us eager to imitate the achievements of ancient heroes like Ettore or Achille.

So that afternoon we decided to ideally represent the Achaeans with leader Giorgio (Achille) and the Trojans led by Ettore (Ettore). We were respectively boys from the city and boys from the country. We fought snowballs.

The "battle" was long and hard and we put some branches and small bushes between the two formations: under the name of various Homeric heroes, we made raids into the enemies' field, risking of being captured as prisoners; some others were busy with ammunitions (huge snowballs, some of wich had real stones inside!). After half-an-hour bombino, our enemies were disoriented: we took advantage of this and we finally assaulted their field, forcing them to surrender and escape!

We, Trojans, were deep wet with red cheecks and snot from our nose, but so happy to defeat the hated Achaens, the so-called "piazzaroli" (from the square).

I still remember that Christmas day as one of the funniest of my childhood".

By Sciumé Calogero, II C