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“Oh, Christmas isn’t just a day. It’s a frame of mind!” Edmund Gwenn’s merry voice exclaims on the screen.
The cheerful declaration is immediately met with a derisive scoff from Aldo’s lap. Aldo ignores the interruption. Ever since he put on Miracle on 34th Street (the original, complete with childhood nostalgia and a terribly dashing John Payne), Goffredo has been releasing a near-continuous stream of what could only very charitably be described as film criticism.
To be fair, Aldo’s promise of a movie about nonbelievers rediscovering their faith in Christmas may have been deliberately misleading. And honestly, he’d expected much worse — so far, the mutterings about the perversion of religious belief into consumerist materialism have been relatively tame (and not entirely inaccurate, Aldo can concede in the privacy of his mind — or, at least, the small recesses of it not currently softened by acute sentimentalism). He might have to show Goffredo the 90s remake next — the courtroom scene where Payne’s sadly less handsome replacement compares the city’s newly-declared belief in Santa Claus to the federal government’s motto of In God We Trust is guaranteed to have him puff up with indignation.
Not that Goffredo is usually a big fan of ostentatious displays of American state religion — in fact, he’s about as likely as Vincent to consider the United States particularly deserving of God’s blessing. (Though where Vincent’s objections stem from his disgust with U.S. imperialism, Aldo suspects that Goffredo’s are still mostly based in his utter disdain for Calvinism, no matter how far he’s succumbed to their new pope’s indoctrination, as he likes to call it.)
But at least where cheesy Christmas movies are concerned, it turns out that Goffredo’s limited tolerance of all things American can be significantly improved by plying him with eggnog and homemade pizzelle. Aldo quickly feeds him another cookie and redirects his attention to the TV. He gets to enjoy his guilty pleasure for all of half a minute, until—
“A mental exam?” Kris Kringle asks resignedly.
“A mental exam?” Goffredo mocks through a mouthful of crumbs. “What do you think, maledetto usurpatore, eh?”
It’s Aldo’s turn to snort. Goffredo’s insults for the department store imposter have been getting increasingly creative, he has to give him that much. (For all his complaints, he’s clearly having a grand old time, even if it is perhaps not in the way originally envisioned by the movie’s producers. But then, when Aldo occasionally deigns to join him for watching a football match, he’s not really concerning himself with analyzing game strategy or the beauty of a perfect through ball either, is he? Perhaps that’s the secret to their odds-defying relationship — a shared willingness to grudgingly indulge the other’s incomprehensible pleasures in life.)
“You know what the imagination is?” Santa asks his young protégé.
“Oh, sure. That’s when you see things but they’re not really there.”
If Aldo squints, he can almost see something of Goffredo in the unimpressed little girl on the screen.
“Well, that can be caused by other things, too.”
Here we go, Aldo thinks, only a split second before—
“And you would know all about that, eh?” Goffredo sneers. “Porca renna, he’s a case for Giulia’s friend who specializes in i pazzi con le allucinazioni…”
This is accompanied by a rude gesture that Aldo is pretty sure would be considered offensive to anyone affected by mental illness. He almost utters a rebuke before thinking better of it. He needs to pick his battles — and this one he can safely leave to Giulia. After all, he has bigger fish to fry. Vincent is planning a wide-ranging consultation on synodality, and Goffredo’s mutterings about the looming end of unità and la tradizione di Roma have been increasing in both plaintiveness and frequency. Aldo will have to redouble his efforts at mediation before Goffredo single-handedly convenes a second Council of Trent.
Upon further consideration, the movie may have been a strategic mistake in that regard. Cultural exposure is probably not going to make Goffredo any more receptive to the Americans’ demands for greater regional autonomy, if his commentary is anything to go by.
“Letters!” Goffredo exclaims as if on cue. “They call that a miracle? He’s proven to be Babbo Natale because someone gave him a sack of letters? If only we had known this 2,000 years ago, eh? Cristo could have simply handed Doubting Tommaso a scroll addressed to the Son of God — ecco fatto!”
Aldo rolls his eyes. “It’s a movie for children. And I thought you’d approve of the message — they’re criticizing the lack of faith in the modern age, the commercialization of Christmas… Shouldn’t that be right up your alley?”
“Oh, really? Santa Claus, the modern invention of a soft drink company, is critiquing the commercialization of the birth of our Lord and Savior? I take it all back then — let’s canonize him immediately!”
“That’s actually an urban myth, they didn’t invent him, they just— never mind. Besides, he’s technically canonized already since he’s based on St. Nicholas.”
“Who is famously the patron saint of department stores, how could I forget…” Goffredo glares scornfully at the jolly old fellow as he shakes hands with the judge.
“Well, perhaps not, but he did end up in prison for slapping Arius at Nicaea,” Aldo argues, warming to the topic. “So Kringle hitting the psychiatrist over the head and getting dragged to court isn’t entirely out of character if we’re looking at historical precedent.”
Goffredo makes an offended noise at Aldo’s implicit equation of one man’s defense of the divinity of Christ with another man’s defense of his own delusions, but his eyes are sparkling as he launches into his counter argument. Ah yes, Aldo remembers, this right here is the secret to their odds-defying relationship.
At some point, he tunes out Goffredo’s increasingly polemical lecture on the necessity of viewing the belief in Santa as heretical (which has somehow segued into an impassioned call to arms to protect the integrity of the Nicene creed) and focuses on enjoying the movie.
He buries his fingers in Goffredo’s hair, playing with the silvery curls and massaging his scalp. Besides food, this is his back-up strategy for combatting excessive grumpiness, and it has yet to fail him. As expected, Goffredo settles with a content sigh and restricts himself to the occasional irritated grunt for the rest of the movie’s duration.
When the credits start rolling, he shifts in Aldo’s lap and gives him a look that Aldo can’t quite parse.
“You know, we could speak English sometimes, if you want,” he offers, apropos of nothing that Aldo can readily discern.
(English is not a language Goffredo has any fondness for, even though he does speak it fluently — and Aldo highly doubts that watching this movie in the original version has somehow changed his feelings on the subject.)
“Why would we do that?” he asks, not even attempting to hide his confusion.
“Beh, it’s your mother tongue, no? I thought you might miss it.”
Huh. That's surprisingly considerate, but—
“It’s not, technically,” Aldo explains. “My mother’s family came to the States when she was a teenager. She never became fully comfortable with English. My father was born in the U.S., so he was fluent, but we mostly spoke Italian at home.”
“Still,” Goffredo insists, and Aldo gets the distinct sense that he’s missing something here. “It must remind you of the place, no?”
“Yes, I suppose, but I don’t— Wait, are you worried that I’m homesick?”
Aldo has barely set foot in the U.S. in the past three decades — where on earth would Goffredo have gotten that idea? (And besides, he does speak English with Thomas all the time, so it’s not as if he’s in any danger of getting rusty.)
Goffredo shrugs. “You were happy, no? When you went back? On your trip with Vincenzo.”
And just like that, the pieces of the puzzle fit themselves together in Aldo’s mind. To Goffredo, home is the place he grew up, always has been and always will be. His roots reach deep into the dry soil of his parents’ and grandparents’ village. He can’t go too long without visiting before he gets antsy. Aldo doubts that he could ever be truly happy living further than driving distance — European driving distance — away. Of course he would worry that Aldo will be drawn back to New York, now that he has made peace with his past. Aldo doesn’t know how to explain that for him, it’s different. Those early roots were too starved to truly take. He’s a successful transplant. His home is right here, in Rome.
“I was happy,” he says. “And I’m glad I went. But it was a chance to close an old chapter of my life, not to open a new one. I’m not going anywhere.”
He bends down to press a kiss to Goffredo’s curls. Goffredo promptly tries to squirm away, clearly unhappy to have been so transparent.
“But I wouldn’t mind spending Christmas in New York again someday,” Aldo continues, taking mercy on him. “You could come with me, what do you think?”
“Beh. To do what? Visit Babbo Natale in his shopping mall?” Goffredo drawls. He sits up and refills their wine glasses, then settles back against Aldo’s side. Aldo snakes an arm around his shoulders and swings his legs over Goffredo’s lap.
“Oh, I was going to take you ice skating at Rockefeller Center,” he says with an innocent flutter of his lashes. “It’s very romantic, you know?”
“I see — mi rompi le palle and now you want to break my bones, too? Shame on you, Aldino. Not all of us possess the gift of being graceful enough to move on blades without making fools of ourselves!” He makes an exasperated gesture that seems to encompass the whole length of Aldo’s body, wrapped around his own as it currently is. Aldo chooses to interpret this as a compliment for his poise and narrowly resists the urge to preen. (As a matter of fact, he has never ice skated in his life and would probably be just as likely to sustain some embarrassing injury in the attempt, but Goffredo doesn’t need to know that.)
He heaves a put-upon sigh and raises his hands in surrender. “Fine, we’ll just… I don’t know, look at the lights, then? Have some nice food? Come on, you can’t possibly object to that now, can you?”
Apparently, Goffredo can, at least if his look of utter disgust is anything to go by.
“Nice food, hah! You would only try to feed me the abomination they pass off as pizza there, and then all would be ruined,” he proclaims rather dramatically. “Not even your pretty eyes or any of your other pretty assets could make me look at you the same way after such a betrayal…”
“Oh, really?” Aldo asks in his best seductive voice. “Not even if I were to, say, unbutton my shirt…?”
He’s not actually wearing a shirt right now, so he hooks his fingers into the V-neck of his sweater and pulls it down for illustration. Goffredo immediately swats his hand away, then sneaks his own under Aldo’s clothes to pet at his chest.
“Now, Aldino,” he pouts. “You wouldn’t use your fur to distract me. Need I remind you that, as a prince of the church, such underhanded tactics are beneath you?”
Aldo grins — the gall of this man!
“Is that so?” he demands. “And I suppose those same high standards don’t apply to you feeling a suspicious urge to pick me up whenever we get into an argument?”
It’s very effective, no matter how well Aldo knows what Goffredo is doing — even after all this time, he still gets a little breathless whenever he finds himself unceremoniously lifted off his feet.
Goffredo shrugs unapologetically. “Bah, you have a very annoying habit of being underfoot. You cannot blame me for occasionally moving you out of the way — it’s just a matter of efficiency!”
Aldo snorts. “Of course. Very efficient of you to spend all those hours in the gym instead of occasionally taking two seconds to ask me to move aside. You’re really onto something there.”
Goffredo growls and tackles him to the couch. (Since they’re both already seated, it’s really more of a shifting of his weight onto Aldo until he’s half-reclined on his back with Goffredo draped over him. He truly does have some rather cat-like habits, Aldo is discovering.)
“I think you should come home for Christmas with me instead,” Goffredo declares. “The holiday is for family, not…fancy decorations and icy deathtraps. We may not have terrible movies or parades but we have actual good food, sai?”
“So, you’re officially inviting me, then?” Aldo teases. “Took you long enough!”
Goffredo has been looking forward to his first lucano Christmas in fifteen years with almost boyish excitement. Aldo had asked Giulia about their plans back in October, thinking it an innocuous enough topic of conversation, but instead he’d been met with an almost panicked look.
“I hope you mean our plans, Aldo,” she said in an urgent whisper, casting a furtive look toward the living room where Goffredo was on his weekly phone call with Angelica while Giulia and Aldo prepared dinner. “You do realize that he’s almost as excited to be spending it with you as with the rest of the family, don’t you? He’ll be sulking all the way through to Epiphany if you don’t come with us. Besides, Mamma is already counting on your help in the kitchen.”
“Well, I could never live with myself if I let down Rita,” Aldo retorted. He tried his best not to melt at the warm, fuzzy feeling making itself at home in his chest when Giulia threw her arms around him with an uncharacteristic squeal of happiness. Instead, he focused on assembling a mental list of the necessary arrangements to ensure that the Vatican would run smoothly in his absence.
By now, his holiday plans have long been put into place. Margherita has sent over the family recipes and Aldo has secretly practiced some of the more challenging dishes, finding more than willing test eaters in Vincent and Thomas. He has procured personalized gifts for the members of Goffredo’s family that he’s been getting to know more closely and made enough baked goods for everyone else. Most importantly, he picked up Goffredo’s present from the jeweler’s only last week.
He and Giulia spent long hours pouring over the design for a new pectoral cross. Goffredo’s current one, having been commissioned upon his elevation to archbishop, was made to reference Venice in every detail, and they had decided that a replacement, commemorating his transfer to the Roman Curia, was in order.
They kept the shape, reminiscent of St. Mark’s, given Goffredo’s love for his former episcopal seat, and also the rubies that suit him so well. The material turned out to be the most difficult challenge. Silver felt too presumptuous — Goffredo would never call himself a liberal and having the designation foisted upon him, however implicitly, would only make him feel cornered. But neither did gold seem entirely fitting anymore, not after he had all but broken with his former faction — or they with him — when he declared his allegiance to Vincent. They went with bronze in the end, inlaid with wood from one of his family’s olive trees — a nod to both his origins and the pope’s own wooden cross. The inscription on the back was a relatively straightforward choice in comparison. A quote from his beloved apostle’s letter to the Ephesians — that epistle on unity both he and Thomas hold so dear — meant to honor his recent renegotiation of his relationship with God and his place in the church: for by grace are ye saved through faith. The end result has turned out as beautifully as Aldo hoped — a labor of love, and a celebration of a new era.
He’s looking forward to seeing Goffredo’s face when he unwraps it. He’s looking forward to the absolute chaos that a gathering of four generations of Tedescos promises to be. He’s looking forward to a Christmas surrounded by family. They’ll have to make compromises, of course — while many of Goffredo’s relatives may be able to guess at the true nature of their relationship, they cannot risk openly confirming those assumptions. Ostensibly, Aldo is just a good friend without a family of his own to spend the holidays with. They will have to be careful about how they act, make sure to stay under the radar. But there will be private moments, too — long walks on the beach, quiet evenings in Margherita’s and Giovanna’s house where they can let their guards down, outings with Luca and Matteo, perhaps. And besides, any concessions pale compared to the prize — ten uninterrupted days together, away from Rome and their professional duties, masses enjoyed from the pews rather than the pulpit, a well-deserved break after an eventful year.
Aldo smiles at Goffredo’s sheepish face. “Of course I’m coming. I’ve already arranged for the time off, since some of us don’t wait until three weeks before Christmas to make plans.” He rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I made you sit through the movie. I didn’t realize you’d hate it that much.”
“Mah. Who says I hated it?” Goffredo protests, a distinctly mischievous glint in his eye. “After all, it might as well have been about us, no? Two people who can’t agree on anything until the sensible one gives in and then they live happily ever after…”
The sensible—? Unbelievable. Aldo smacks him on the head, but this only succeeds in making Goffredo cackle even more gleefully.
Honestly, the real Christmas miracle is that Aldo hasn’t smothered him in his sleep yet. The temptation has certainly been there.
He’s reminded of another of Paul’s counsels to the Ephesians.
And with longsuffering, forbear one another in love.
Aldo sighs and reaches for his wine glass.
“If you think that could have been about us, I’m going to put on The Grinch for you next.”