The Shepherds
By
Debra Waker
December 2021
As the days grow shorter and the nights darker, preparations for the seasonal holiday begin. Grocery stores clear away their Halloween candy and stock the shelves with festive items while Christmas music fills the mall.
In the frenzy of stringing up lights, buying gifts and baking, I like to think back to a simpler time; to my first Christmas in Italy. After enjoying a hot hazy summer, a fun beach life with friends and imbibing the culture along with the wine and the food, the arrival of winter came as a shock.
The first snow appeared on the mountain tops at the beginning of November and with it, a clear, sharp, blue sky and colder weather. The change of the season however, brought with it new delights to be experienced. The wild boar and venison hanging up outside the butcher shop, street sellers roasting chestnuts on their charcoal fires and of course the delicious panettone and panforte that filled the alimentari. But the memory that stays with me, from that first Christmas, is that of the shepherds with their sheep.
Arriving home one evening, I heard a strange noise as I was getting out of the car. It was a kind of persistent bleating sound. I walked to the edge of the road, but it was dusk and impossible to see well. However, I could make out a couple of bonfires and what appeared to be a moving mass on the fields below me. But the air was crisp, so I hurried indoors and into the warm, not giving it another thought.
It was the next morning as I walked down the lane to a friend’s house that I saw the sheep. I’m not good at assessing numbers, but all the fields along the edge of the lake were teeming with thousands of sheep. And in among them were the shepherds. They moved through their flock, checking them, caring for them, stroking them.
I learnt that every year in November the shepherds bring their flocks down from the mountain pastures. They remain a few days, resting while their sheep graze. Then they head further down the valley where they have pasture for the winter. In the spring, when the snow has gone, the shepherds move the sheep back up into the mountains again where they stay for the summer.
Over the next few years, when the first snow appeared on the mountains, I would look out for the shepherds. I liked to stand and watch them and their slow gentle ways, and be reminded that there was once a simpler way of life. And to remember that this was how Christmas was first proclaimed, to shepherds in fields, watching over their flocks.
©Debra Waker