Monday, April 13, 2009

Procession of the Naca

On Good Friday we attended the Procession of the Naca. The Procession of the Naca is a recreation of Jesus Christ carrying the cross towards his crucifixion.

The whole event is a big parade with people in costume with the entire city watching from the streets and from the near by apartments the parade goes by.
In the parade are the people from each church in Roman costumes, Jesus Christ carrying the cross, people carrying flags representing different departments, firefighters, police, all the city and county officials, politians, and musicians.
The center of the parade is the “Naca” which are the angels making the cradle for the dyeing Jesus and a lighted star above them.


The finale is the “Addolorata”, which means “in pain”, and is the statue of the grieving Mary all dressed in black.

This was a fantastic parade! This was a much bigger event than the Sepolcri. We were first in an area where there were so many people we could only see the tops of the crosses and flags. People were standing together, shoulder to shoulder, talking, watching and taking pictures. I too wanted in on the action, Gimmy suggested to stand on the car that was blocked by all the people to take some pictures or to climb up onto a gated window. I did neither of these but we both wanted a better view, so we took a route to a different location. It was a better spot, although we were still in the back of all the people, I found a cement block to stand on to take pictures. There was even a camera crew getting footage of the event, and since I was up so high, and kind of singled out, they were filming me taking pictures of all the activity.


After we saw the parade we walked to, Gimmy’s friend, Venturino’s house for a Calabrese dinner. Which is the obvious, a dinner, but what you eat are different appetizers like an antipasta (no pasta). We had salame, and another kind of salame that is not sliced into pieces but is used as a spread on toasted bread. Different kinds of cheese, baked olives, preserved mushrooms in vinegar, sun dried tomatoes, tiny artichokes about the size of a marble and also preserved in some kind of vinegar, and you eat all of these very tasty things with freshly baked bread from that morning.

Venturino and his wife, Daniela are both doctors, Daniela being Sisi pediatrician. In Italy, the patients will bring gifts to their doctor, which can be an Easter basket or a food such as salame, cheese, or a sweet for the holidays. Since Venturino and Daniela are both doctors, their dining room table was filled with gifts and they were so nice to share these special foods with us for the Calabrese dinner. There is a joke that what ever you give to your doctor must be the best because you don’t want to disappoint him or her. And, yes, the food was some of the best!

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