Italian Birthday Parties

Here is what you need to know if your kid is in Pre-School (I will update you next year for the rules on Elementary).

1. Once your kid enters Scuola Materna, it is all over for you you have officially entered the "Party Circuit."
2. You are expected to go to your kid's birthday parties and stay the entire time.
3. There are a lot of parties.
4. Normally the entire class is invited.
5. Yes, your time will come!

Survival Guide

If you are new in town or at the school, we suggest you go to the parties your kid is invited to. This will help your kid integrate and you can meet other parents, who may actually be nice people. The first year this is especially important. Making friends with other parents means you can occasionally help each other out (you are on a business trip, need a playdate until daddy gets there, that kind of thing). These can be very valuable relationships, particularly if you do not speak the language, or need some help navigating "The System."

Italians are social animals, and they are a high-context culture, which means they read into EVERYTHING and actually find MEANING in things that we can't even begin to understand. Imagine a whole country that sees the world and interprets it like (I was as) a teenage girl. Not going to parties can send a message that you are too good for them or snobby. (The same goes for that morning coffee at work with your colleagues. Don't skip it!!).

Every class has a handful of people who love organizing a group gift. This is great for you! Let someone else buy the present. You can pay them at the party.

The Best Part about Italian Birthday Parties:

You may luck out like we did! Since we put my daughter in a Slovenian school (in Italy), many of the birthday parties we go to are at Osmizzas (woo hoo! The Parents make wine!!) and there is a party within the party-- the kids run around like wild hellions in the courtyard, and the parents sip on terrano wine and chow down on homemade cold cuts and cheese while looking the other way. This is great for those of us whose party wings have been clipped since entering into parenthood!

Last week we went to a party in Repen and there were HORSES for the kids to ride. Not only that, at some point an elderly couple walked by with a couple of the biggest cows I had ever seen. The kids acted as if it were planned by the birthday girl's parents and followed the cows down the street until they realized they were just neighbors walking home after letting their cows hang out on some pasture in the area. Where were the parents, you ask? What kind of traffic can there be with two cows in the street anyway? Back to the wine!


When it is YOUR turn to host:

You may want to find a kid with a birthday around the same time and double up. Other parents will thank you and you can share the expenses. The more the merrier. Hopefully the person you are sharing with has already thought of everything.

Here is what is on the menu, just so you know.

Food
Potato Chips
Cocktail weenies wrapped in some kind of puffed pastry
Baked Ham or cured prosciutto, Cheese, bread
Pizza that someone's mom made or mini round pizzas from the bakery
Open-faced Nutella sandwiches

Drinks
Wine & Beer for the parents
Water
Coke (which all kids will take and then complain that it is too spicy and parents will add water to it)
Orange soda
Juice (that no one will drink)

The Cake
No simple sheet cakes here, no Siree! The cake here is a creamy affair with pudding and whipped something or other, a shot of rum, and a small layer of actual cake. And it is SHOCKINGLY EXPENSIVE and sold by weight. The bakery will recommend you feed each kid a minimum of 5 kilos each and make you feel like the worst parent in the world if you don't (the kids will take one half bite and give the other 4.9999999999 kilos to you and you will finish it because you know how much it cost).

There is one cake per (birthday) kid (you are responsible for ordering the one for your kid and getting it to the venue responsibly). The insulated styrofoam box you transport it in is going to set you back 50 euros as a deposit that you will get back as soon as you return it back to the bakery.

Your party should be after lunch and will last until about dinner time. So put the start time.
3pm, but no need to put the end time, because everyone knows the party is over when the cake comes out...

...unless the party is in an osmizza, in which case the party is over when the Red wine is all gone and the pitcher stops getting filled up.

Then it is time to go.