December 22nd, 2025

Good mornings folks,

   As many people know, forty years ago, I took a job teaching in Europe for the school year of 1985- 86. Julie and I melded our families and moved to the Netherlands. Neither of us had ever set foot in Europe. It was an eye opening experience, especially for the kids. We put the little business that I had started 10 years earlier on hold, packed up our stuff and set up a household in the seaside town of Scheveningen.

   We tried to take advantage of every school vacation and picked a different destination for each. Our first trip was to Ireland to visit our friend Tom Cussen and his family during the October break. Our kids made friends with his kids as they seemed to do everywhere they went. Kids have that uncanny ability.

   In our apartment, every night we had dinner as a family. On the wall next to the dining room table was a large map of Europe. Often, after dinner, I would get up and start pontificating about our future travels, until one-by-one, the kids would put their heads on the table and the only one left would be a weary-eyed Julie. We were going to go to Rome for Christmas! A Dutch travel agent arranged lodging along the way and while in Rome. They couldn’t believe we were going to drive to Rome instead of fly. In our minds, it was no farther than Florida and that’s where people from New York go for vacation. So we drove in our old Mercedes-Benz with the kids strapped in the back. It was a trip for the books. It took about three days to get to the Eternal City and then it took a lifetime to find our apartment. It was like the comical scene in Chevy Chase’s  "European Vacation", circling the Colosseum and pointing it out to the kids for about two hours. When we finally found our hotel… it was in an old warehouse with a large "hammer and sickle" painted on the outside wall…. The hotel itself was on the third floor of this otherwise empty building. The open chain style elevator was old and creaky but it took us up to the third floor with our luggage. We rode up with a couple who had just arrived from Bavaria. The man had a pointed hat with a little feather and he was wearing lederhosen. His wife had a big scowl on her face. He looked at me and said, "Nicht zo gut!". We checked into the room and then went out to explore the city. We had a couple of days before Christmas and we wanted to get our bearings. We visited the Vatican, we visited the Colosseum, Trevi fountain and the Forum and as many churches as we could. 

     In America, our families usually spent Christmas Eve as large gathering with mine being the traditional Italian feast of fishes. So we went out and shopped for food so we could have a proper Christmas Eve dinner. We went to a few trattorias and put together stuff for a fine meal. When we brought everything back to the hotel, nearly all of the tables in the dining area were put end to end in a single long line. Apparently a family from Calabria had come to Rome to visit their grandfather who had been in the hospital. They were having a big family dinner there were a couple of the tables left to the side and our family occupied one small table. When everyone was seated at the large, long arranged tables, they brought grandpa out, and he sat at the head. He had a long white beard and looked very frail. Now we didn’t speak any Italian, but we did have a little dictionary that we used. During the course of the dinner, the old man turned to one of the kids at the table and told him to pass one of their dishes to us. We, in turn, passed our food to them, and then we started sharing our wine and tried to communicate using our little dictionary.

    When everybody was full and still sipping wine, the kids all got up and did the exact same thing that I remember doing when I was a young child at my grandmother’s house after Christmas Eve dinner. They started to wrestle and do acrobats, and sing to entertain the adults. Well, it didn’t take much time before our kids joined them and they played for hours on the floor of that hotel dining area. We seemed to become part of a family, and then we sat down together for our dessert. After sharing some tasty homemade pastry we were just sitting there, trying to find the words to communicate. The mother of one young girl, kept elbowing her daughter. The girl kept shaking her head and looking a bit nervous and distraught. Now, we weren’t quite sure what was going on, but finally, and reluctantly, she stood up. To the amazement of all of us she started singing, in perfect English, "I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas"! Julie and I turned to each other with tears streaming down our cheeks. It was like a Christmas miracle and it was their gift to us. We cleaned everything up, put it away and the next day the family was gone. We explored Rome for the rest of the week and then headed to Switzerland for a New Year’s celebration…with that Christmas is one that I will remember forever.

With Peace

John Bernunzio 

Christmas 1985! The girl in the white sweater at the top was the singer