Angels we have heard on high,

Like everyone else, there's a lot I miss about the before times. Seeing friends and family beyond my small-ish bubble. Eating out. Hugging. Volunteering at St. Francis House. Smiling at babies. And dogs. Bustling shopping areas. Store fronts that aren't empty. Store browsing and occasional impulse buying. Fenway Park (even if the team is a complete and utter suckfest). The library. Not expending any energy whatsoever worrying about where my next roll of toilet paper is going to come from. Not having to wash my hands with the attention and fervor that would in the old days be expected only from a surgeon prepping for a 10-hour operation. 

And events. I miss events.

Not that I'd be caught dead at it, but I missed the St. Patrick's Day Parade. The Patriots Day buzz around the Marathon. The Pops and the fireworks on the Fourth of July (traditionally observed from the comfort of my home, but an event nonetheless).

And I missed the Italian saints festivals down in Boston's North End.

Some are just processions, in which members of a society rooted in some region of Italy parade around carrying a statue of their patron saint, accompanied by the Roma Band. The society members are typically descendants of immigrants from the whatever region, carrying on a tradition that came over on the boat with their grandparents or great-grandparents.

Some are just processions, in which members of a society rooted in some region of Italy parade around carrying a statue of their patron saint, accompanied by the Roma Band. The members are typically descendants of immigrants from the whatever region.

Here's a before times shot of the Madonna delle Grazie, Our Lady of Graces. Or, as I like to think of her, The Curly-Haired Madonna. With Curly-Haired Child. 

The bills and checks are pinned on, and they fund the society (many still have club houses) for the coming year. 

Other North End happenings are bigger deals, full blown festivals running multiple nights and featuring concerts, food (calamari, fried dough, cannoli...), carnival rides, carnival games, trinket sales, processions, and - in the case of the Fisherman's Feast - a flying angel. 

The tradition of a young girl flying over the crowds at the Fisherman’s Feast is so entrenched in the North End that the apartment she flies from has a special provision in the lease to allow it. The building even has a permanent hook used to hoist the angel above the noisy, packed streets. (Source: Boston Globe)

Festivals ain't flying this year, so the Madonna del Soccoroso Society, which runs the Fisherman's Feast, went virtual. One of the Society's leaders, Dom Strazzullo:

...developed a virtual feast with videos of the festival’s traditional activities, which he called a “three-part documentary series,” to keep the streak alive. The series culminated Saturday night with the flying angel ceremony.

If you've got 20 minutes, the video they pulled together is definitely worth watching for a little slice of Italian-American life, North End of Boston style - accents and all! 

I usually get to one or two festas/processions a year. Last year, it was the Feast of St. Joseph, which I went to with my sister Trish and our niece Caroline. As is my long standing tradition, we first ate Chinese on the outskirts of the North End, then dove in and waded through the crowd, saw part of the procession, then hung in for part of the concert - long enough to hear them play "Eh, Cumpari", to which Trish and I happily sung along. (We may not have been Italian, but we had that Julius LaRosa 78 at our house.)

My husband and I always hit a couple of festivals, often with kids in tow, and Jim would get to show off his sharpshooting skills on the game where you use a tethered squirt gun to stream water into the mouth of a clown. First one to explode the balloon growing out of the clown's head wins a swell prize. We never came away empty.

We'd often hit a concert, and one evening even heard Al Martino sing.

And I'd always get a ten-second catch-up with a former colleague who played the drum in the Roma Band, as Steve from Wang and his band mates marched along behind whatever statue was being carried through the streets. 

Like everything else in the world (at least in Boston: c.f., the Marathon, the Pops on the Fourth), over the years, the Italian festivals have become too much of a thing. The crowds are crazy and it's just not as enjoyable as it was when you could more casually stroll around.

Still, the North End crowds were never so awful that I stayed entirely away. The Italian Festivals are, of course, yet another reason why it's wonderful to live in a city. 

Just not this year.

I will note that this year's virtual angel has been promised the slot as flying angel next year. I plan on being there for her flight. It'll have been way too long since there was an angel to hear on high.