While walking, I took pictures of two of the larger Christmas trees in Rome. Christmas trees are not really much of an Italian custom, much more German. Nevertheless, like most things in our globalized culture, these customs spread, mostly because of American movies and television.
One of the friars here tells the story of a church here in Rome belonging to a group of non-Italian religious. The religious superior wanted to put an Advent wreath in the church for the first time. Advent wreaths are also not really an Italian tradition. Anyway, it was put in the nave of the Church. One of the local parishioners was seen standing in front of it, making the sign of the cross, and shaking her head slowly. She thought it was a funeral wreath! (Wreaths in Italian are pretty much only used at funerals.) They stopped using the advent wreath.
These two trees are down the street from each other, one right next to the Colosseum and one in the Piazza Venezia.
