#6 Spelacchio, living the American Dream (English)

He’s back! Spelacchio is back again! Who?!, I can hear you think. Spelacchio is Rome’s gigantic Christmas tree that is put up on Piazza Venezia every year. A huge square where buses, scooters and cars cross each other with loud honking and accompanying hand gestures, and with the pompous Altare della Patria marking its south side. Eight December is the day people in Italy put up their Christmas tree and decorate their houses accordingly and I couldn’t be happier when I noticed that also in Italy, it seems to be more exaggerated every year. Everyone is off work and schools are closed since it’s one of the most important holidays of the year: La Festa della Madonna (no, Italians haven’t dedicated an entire holiday to the Queen of Pop: it’s the day of the immaculate conception of Maria). Last Sunday, the day had finally arrived that Spelacchio could shine his lights for the first time this year: a gorgeous spectacle. However, contrary to his grandeur now, his life has not always been so easy. 

The criticisms of the Romans were very harsh, mainly directed towards the mayor Virginia Raggi. But then the Christmas spirit started to fill the hearts of the locals

Christmas two years ago had been a very difficult year for him. It was the year in which Spelacchio got his special name. His precedent in 2016 was already no price winner when it came to his beauty, yet 2017 would turn out to be a disaster. The very tall Christmas tree was brought to Rome straight from the Dolomites, but after his lights were festively turned on the eighth of December it went downhill rapidly. All his needles fell off and every single day the sickly and plucked tree resembled a toilet brush more and more. It was a week before Christmas when municipality workers officially declared the Christmas tree to be dead. The criticisms of the Romans were very harsh, mainly directed towards the mayor Virginia Raggi. But then the Christmas spirit started to fill the hearts of the locals. On a cold December morning, someone decided to affectionately call the miserable tree Spelacchio, ‘bold guy’, and from that moment on, everything changed. Spelacchio won the hearts of the Romans. En masse, they came rushing to the tree to decorate his bald branches with handwritten cards varying from love letters to condolences. The hashtag #jesuisspelacchio was born and Spelacchio made it to the headlines of newspapers worldwide. And that’s how he didn’t go unnoticed in America either…

People passing by already started yelling “ciarisémo!”, Roman dialect for ‘here we go again’

It’s in the nature of Italians to be very critical on their own country and city, which is often quite justified. Nevertheless, it’s also in their nature to overreact every now and then, only able to picture the most negative possible outcome and jumping to conclusions too fast. Although Spelacchio conquered the hearts of everyone with his bald branches the year before, the Romans were eagerly looking forward to a renewed and voluminous tree last year. But even before the new Spelacchio was unloaded from the large truck, he was already heavily criticized. Admittedly, he indeed looked a little strange as the Christmas tree didn’t have branches at all this time. People passing by already started yelling “ciarisémo!”, Roman dialect for ‘here we go again’. The pessimists immediately came up with a new name for Spelacchio: Spezzachio, meaning something like ‘broken one’ in Roman dialect, but then it all appeared to be a deliberate tactic to reattach the branches to the stem after the transport. However, of much more importance was the news that, in the meantime, Spelacchio had become a true movie star! No one less than the gigantic American Netflix had seen all of his great potential and had given him a make-over people had never seen before. And that’s how the Americans brought Spelacchio, in a very full and healthy shape, back to the eternal city. 

No doubt that Spelacchio now has the biggest sponsor deal of all Christmas trees, officially having fulfilled the American dream

Having followed the amazing story of this special Christmas tree in the local Roman news in the previous years, I couldn’t wait to see the Spelacchio of 2019. And he’s gorgeous! For the second year in a row Netflix has provided the gigantic tree, a tender issued by the Roman municipality for the astonishing amount of four hundred thousand euro. No doubt that Spelacchio now has the biggest sponsor deal of all Christmas trees, officially having fulfilled the American dream. A dream for which more than four million Italians crossed the ocean in the first half of the previous century, immigrating en masse to the country with endless opportunities in search for a better future. Because don’t we all recognize ourselves a little in Spelacchio? Myself too, I have moved to Rome fulfilling a dream. Before boarding that plane in October, I had to deal with many opinions of others – of course all with the best intentions, but still. I couldn’t have done it without the firmest belief in myself and my capabilities, a strong will and an unquestionable faith that even when you don’t exactly know how yet, everything will always turn out all right in the end. 

So, literally the moment photos of Milan’s Christmas tree on the famous Piazza Duomo came in, the Romans couldn’t stop laughing

Like in any other country, in Italy there’s a healthy rivalry between the largest cities: Rome and Milan to be more specific. So, literally the moment photos of Milan’s Christmas tree on the famous Piazza del Duomo came in, the Romans couldn’t stop laughing. In Milan they had put up a hyper modern, metal Christmas tree – no doubt intended to be an artistic and architectal highlight – that doesn’t transport the warm and cosy Christmas feeling at all. Pictures on which our – by the Americans fatted Spelacchio – is compared to the Milanese skeleton were massively shared on the internet and the Romans couldn’t hide their pride. Oùr Spelacchio is an American superstar and the most beautiful Christmas tree in the world. Because at the end of the day, every Roman is a little bit Spelacchio, and Spelacchio is all of us. So when I fly back home for Christmas this Friday, I’ll also take a little piece of Spelacchio with me in my heart.