The holiday season for me and my family traditionally consists of a Christmas Eve service at church, followed by a day of gorging on ham, cornbread dressing and pecan pie. New Year's has become fairly tame for us--usually finding us in bed asleep before the midnight hour rings in the new year (pitiful, I know). Dreams of spending the holidays in Italy led me to ask my friend, Andrea Ferrario, about his Italian traditions. After reading his response, spending a Christmas in Italy has, without doubt, move up the ol' bucket list!Thank you, Andrea, for sharing a little piece of your Italian Christmas with us...
Christmas is one of the main religious holidays in Italy (the other being Easter), and it is traditionally celebrated within the family with large meals. Because of the great importance family values are given in Italy, often all the relatives meet at a single place to celebrate, and so there can be easily more than a dozen people eating together. Sometimes, each family spends the Christmas Eve with the wife's relatives and Christmas day with the husband's, or viceversa.
In many parts of Italy, people traditionally gather on the evening of the 24th of December to celebrate Christmas Eve waiting for midnight. The Eve dinner is fish-based, because it used to be di magro (poor meal), and so deprived of meat. The Christmas lunch, on the other hand, is meat-based; it begins at noon and ends (maybe) in late afternoon. Italians like to spend a lot of time sitting at the table, but this doesn't mean we restlessly eat for six hours! Since holidays are a good chance to get the family together, most of the time is occupied by chatting and telling news about each other's life. Sometimes during the afternoon, people may engage in old-fashioned games like tombola (a sort of bingo) or card games.
The day after Christmas, Santo Stefano (St. Stephen), is celebrated too, often with another meal. Usually people try, within the Eve, Christmas and St. Stephen's day, to meet the relatives of all the branches of the family.
Christmas culinary traditions in Italy are very different from place to place, mainly for historical reasons. In the past, when most of the Italian society was rural, the Christmas meal was one of the most important of the year, and so people used to save the most luxurious food (e.g., valuable meat) for it, accompanied by seasonal vegetables. Obviously, the kind of food was different in each area, and so, over the years, it became the "traditional" dish of that region. Therefore, there isn't a proper "traditional Italian" meal, but here is an example of an "average" menu: first the aperitivo, with prosecco wine and some appetizers, antipasto (starters); as primo piatto (first serving), lasagne or tortellini in brodo (stuffed pasta boiled in meat soup); as secondo piatto (second serving), roasted meat, such as pork or lamb, with potatoes. Meat is served with red wine.
More can be said about the dessert (dolce). While there are plenty of regional recipes, a widespread (I could easily say, national) tradition is to eat panettone, which is a dome-shaped sweet bread with candied fruit and raisins, invented in Milan, and pandoro, that is similar but star-shaped, without candied fruits and covered in powdered sugar. In fact, an enormous number of these are eaten each year, and in winter you can find supermarkets packed with panettoni and pandoro of various brands. As in each celebration, bottles of spumante (sparkling white wine) are opened with the characteristic "pop" noise, which is accompanied by cheers.
After the dessert, seasonal fruit is served, such as agrumes (citrus fruits), along with nuts, almonds and peanuts. The latter are also used a fiches (gambling chips) or placeholders for the games during the afternoon.
I asked my grandmother about traditional meals of the area where I live, the Brianza (north of Milan). They used to kill a cappone (rooster) a few days before Christmas and hang it outside the window to keep it cool. On Christmas day, it was boiled and the soup obtained was used to make a risotto.
As in the other parts of the world, a typical Christmas tradition is to exchange presents. This can happen at midnight after the dinner or before the Christmas meal. Little Italians look forward to Christmas morning waiting for the toys Baby Jesus (Gesu Bambino) or Santa Claus (Babbo Natale) brought during the night. Anyway, there is an important exception: in Northeastern Italy and in the Bergamo and Brescia provinces, Santa Lucia (St. Lucy) brings presents to the children in the night between the 12th and 13th of December.
Italy is much more united about the New Year's Eve dinner (cenone) and in the lunch of January the 1st (pranzo di Capodanno). The tradition, originating in Northern Italy but nowadays followed in all the country, is to serve cotechino e lenticchie (boiled sausage with lentils), which is said to bring good fortune and money (because of the lentils resembling coins) in the new year.
The last important celebration in winter is the 6th of January the Epiphany, when the Befana (an old and ugly lady dressed like a witch) brings sweets and candies to the children.
Happy Holidays and Buon Natale to all, near and far!!
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