New Year's Eve In Rome

December 30, 2013

     "Throw something out the window and make a lot of noise, as the Italians do", is my advice to a friend in Zurich, as we approach New Year's Eve.  Completely unsuitable counsel, but one that brings back a flood of memories of the week between Christmas and New Year's that Bill and I spent in Rome, some twenty years ago.

     We were staying in a package hotel near the north end of the Villa Borghese, a long walk from the center of the city.  We would walk through the gardens a good twenty minutes, taking in, as we approached Rome's heart, the equestrian police.  With their tricornered hats and long capes, they looked like something out of Lampedusa's "The Leopard", fusty and antiquated.  We had made a few reservations at the restaurants in Rome known for fine dining, "Nino's", and "Da Mario", although a little place near our hotel turned out to be surprisingly good.  For New Year's Eve, we had booked at "La Rosetta", a luxurious venue hard to get a reservation in.

     The experience that night was all it was cracked up to be, although we discovered we were atypical of the clientele, which featured quite a few elegantly dressed older Romans squiring considerably younger ones dressed fetchingly.  It could have been a scene out of "La Dolce Vita".  There was an air of decadence and its perdurability in the Eternal City:  Older men prefer younger women and younger women prefer money.  It was ever thus.

     Afterwards we had an experience that evoked another Rome.  It brings to mind something I heard this week at church, about the horizontal and vertical dimensions of Christianity, another legacy of Rome.

      For those, like me, new to the concepts, the idea is that the nativity of Christ has a vertical and a horizontal dimension.  In its verticality, Christ came down from heaven and gave man a way of salvation from the world; in its horizontal aspect, that fact should move the sincere Christian to activity in keeping with the message, acts of goodness towards his fellow man.  The confluence of the two is joy.

      To return to my tale, after dinner, as the tolling of midnight approached, we went to the Trevi Fountain, which was comfortably thronged.  We mounted the steps of a church adjoining to get a better view of the Trevi horses and watch the scene.  On the steps were a small group of older Italians, there to do likewise.  They had bottles of wine and plastic cups in their hands.

       When the church bells tolled 2014, a riotous clatter was heard, as people in the vicinity shouted "Auguri!", threw old things out the window and banged pots.  The people around us kissed each other, and we did the same.  After a moment, we felt our arms jostled: an elderly couple, part of a larger group of Romans standing on the steps, passed us each a plastic cup of white wine.

        I remember being so touched by their gesture.  They were old enough, I thought, to have lived through the Second World War and its hardships.  Perhaps they recognized we were Americans, perhaps they would have been generous to anyone standing on the steps with them that momentous night.  Under Rome's clement skies that night, at that moment, we were united by our common humanity.

        The vertical meeting the horizontal, or just a small generosity inspired by a festive moment?  The feeling I had was so strong I remember it years later, although I cannot tell you why.