My children don’t know what Carnevale really is. Every year I promise myself to take them to Italy, at least once for Carnevale, but every year the distance seems insurmountable, our agenda too full of  commitments that cannot be postponed, the gap between me and my traditions, between my memories and the ones that I would like to create for my children,  bigger and bigger.

Growing up my girls have had plenty of opportunities to dress up, still now they often come home, run to the their bedrooms to get changed and start countless hours of fun, pretend play, dreaming of being beautiful princesses or angry witches.  But Carnevale is not just ‘dressing up’.

Since we have been living in Shanghai every year in October we celebrate Halloween. For the children it has become a ‘not to be missed ‘ event, for which they start planning weeks ahead. Most of the international kindergartens and schools dye themselves orange, decorate classrooms and halls with spiders and witches, ghosts and pumpkins. Some compounds go through an amazing makeover, houses decorated and ready to welcome the children and their parents for trick or treat…and over time more and more Chinese flood the events, knocking at doors and asking for sweets or maybe just for a new emotion with an exotic flavor….

But Halloween is not Carnevale.

For me Carnevale is happy memories of fun, laughter, colorful parties, coriandoli (confetti), humorous and satirical floats parading on the streets, masks, silly tricks, me dressed up as a French queen or Indian princess like my best friend, my mum unrecognizable as a man,  chiacchiere o cicerchiata (sweets only made and eaten during Carnevale), a horse race in the old part of my hometown where the jockey tries to hit a “viccio “ (turkey)  suspended in a cage in the air, unwilling star of an afternoon of euphoria…. (I know, it sounds so cruel now, it didn’t when I was little…. Now they hit a balloon  and the turkey is given to the winner alive) check it out…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoSqoT_GmC8

And then Venice, its superlative costumes, the human rivers of dressed up people flowing down the calli (venetian streets), the parties, the concerts, the street performers…something like this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVo_Hy16DvI&feature=related

This is my Carnevale, the one of when I was little and the one of my university years, the one in my heart and in my memory.

Every year though, there is one place in Shanghai where we  can give a taste of Carnevale to our children. The Italian school “G. Rodari”, that they attend on Saturday mornings, always makes sure that there is room to celebrate Italian traditions and festivities. It’s a small school that makes a big effort, and whether we do it more for ourselves or for them it doesn't matter…,  we try to keep these traditions alive.

This year again they learnt about the different masks, typical of each region, they dressed up for the day, parents and teachers made the chiacchiere and for a few hours it was Carnevale again.

I hope next year I’ll manage to take them to Italy , then I won’t have to tell them about it , they’ll be able to see it, to breathe it in, to experience it…and to remember it.