Zampognari from Molise
The tremendous economic progress of the past 40 years or so and the attendant changes in life styles have altered, naturally enough, some family rituals and a few of the other ways of celebrating the Christmas season in Abruzzo and Molise.  Nonetheless, most of the old traditions linger on, and some are very much alive, as in the practice of stretching the holiday season to the twelfth day of Christmas, instead of ending it on New Year’s Day. The Twelfth Day of Christmas is, of course, January the 6th, when Abruzzo and Molise, like the rest of Italy, celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany (l’Epifania), in commemoration of the Three Kings’ arrival at Bethlehem (l’arrivo dei Re Magi), to adore the Infant Jesus. Abruzzesi and Molisani children don’t have to go back to school until January the 7th, and l’Epifania is still a legal holiday, as well as  a holy day of obligation, just as Christmas Day and New Year’s Day are.

The Old

Most of the customs narrated here are either from recollections from my childhood and adolescence in Tione degli Abruzzi (AQ), or from bits of oral history that our old-timers used to recount to anyone who cared to listen. Truth to tell, however--and here is where the new begins to make its apperance--I had never heard of some of these traditions until I began surfing the Internet in preparation for this article!

Presepe
1. Casa e Chiesa.  For the elders, the holiday season  began nine days before Christmas, with the start of the novena and its nine evenings of prayer, at church. (The English word novena derives from the Italian word nove, i.e., nine.) For the children, however, Christmas really started on the 24th, when the Nativity Scene, or Presepe, was set up. The Presepe was always laid on fresh, green moss, in a corner of the floor which was always made of either tiles or bricks. The moss was readily available from any pile of stones in the countryside. City people, however, had to make do with some straw or some other artificial mat, unless they could obtain the real moss from their friends or relatives who lived in villages. (I have never seen a more excited group of women, nor have I ever been fussed over more than on that distant day of my youth when I delivered a huge suitcase full of moss to the chapel of the nuns who served as nurses at the hospital in L’Aquila.)

A type of frittelli

After the Nativity was set up, the women in the family would make i frittelli di Natale, sort of fritters, but much better tasting.  In today’s parlance, I would call them Christmas hors d’oeuvres. Preparation of the frittelli would start in the early afternoon of the same day, and continue for at least two or three hours. The children would first savor their respective mothers’ goodies, and then move from house to house, to pig out on the frittelli from each of the household they visited. Other traditional cookie-like christmas sweets are pizzelle (or ferratelle) made by frying over a fireplace sweet dough pressed in a ferro or cast-iron mold.

Original iron for pizzelle (1916)

Tombola
By the time the children went back home, just before dark, the fireplace was ablaze with the ciocco, or Yule log. This log, usually from an oak or almond tree, was selected months in advance of Christmas, and was the largest that the fireplace could accommodate. At Isernia, the head of the household blessed the log and kissed it before putting it in the fireplace, while everyone around shouted, “Viva Gesu`”, or, “Praise Jesus.” The log was kept burning all night, or even a few days after that, to keep Baby Jesus warm. Along the coastal areas, however, an olive tree stump (ceppo) was usually burned, and the ashes from it were scattered in the vineyards on New Year’s Day, to ensure an abundant harvest. Before sitting down for the late-evening supper, or cenone, a game of tombola, a variation of bingo, was usually played by children and grown-ups alike. Actually, tombola was played every day of the Season, but rarely, if ever, at any other time of the year.

Cenone, which means big cena or big supper, was an elaborate affair. At least 13 items, but not necessarily 13 different courses, had to be served. Dried cod fish (baccala`) was indispensable, but the more sophisticated preferred eel. A simple, but very tasty soup, made of chick peas with a bit of chopped-up anchovies and seasoned with olive oil in which a glove of garlic and hot pepper had been fried, was also inevitably eaten in my village. (I still make it every Christmas eve, but I have never seen it served, either there or anywhere else, at any other time of the year, except once in India, some 35 years ago. The host actually apologized for having to offer such humble fare, and probably thought that I was merely being gracious when I told him that I ate exactly the same soup on Christmas eve.)

Dessert consisted of oranges, dried figs, apples that had been set aside in straw, to keep them fresh for the cenone, torrone, and fresh grapes which had been stored in saw dust (it works, but there is no need for you to do it now).

After the cenone, the entire family, including the children that were still awake, was off to church for the midnight Mass. At Oratino (Campobasso) just before Mass started, a huge, upright bundle made of canes, about 40 feet high, was set afire in the square in front of the main church. In general, the religious service seemed interminable, and the church was cold, because it had no heating system, but the carols were beautiful. The teenagers had been practicing for weeks and they sang melodiously--or, at least, so it seemed to the youngsters. Tu scendi dalle stelle was, and still is, the best and most popular of all the carols. The words were written by Pope (now Blessed) Pious IX. The first four lines read: Tu scendi dalle stelle/ O re del Cielo/ E vieni in una grotta/ Al freddo e al gelo. To make the words rhyme, a rough translation can be: From starring skies descending/ You come, o glorious King/ A manger for your bed/ In winter’s icy sting.  (I have always wondered why this classic Italian carol is virtually unknown in this country, especially if one considers that other types of Italian music are rather popular here.)

After church, the children went to bed right away, and did not even try to stay awake to see if they could get a glimpse of Santa, or Babbo Natale, as he is now called in Italy, for the simple reason that Babbo Natale (literally, Father Christmas) did not begin visiting Abruzzo-Molise until the late 1950’s or early 1960’s. In the Marsica, however, the children did try to stay awake in the hope of being able to see the Holy Family. You see, in that part of Abruzzo, the door was left ajar all night long, to make certain that the Holy Family, running away from Herod’s persecution, could come in more quickly to find safe haven inside.

Festivities on Christmas Day itself were rather subdued, after the previous night’s extravaganza.  The highlight of the family celebration was the reading by the children, during the mid-day meal, of a letter that they had written to their parents. In it, year after year, they invariably apologized for their past escapades and always promised to behave better in the coming year. These letters were written on special stationery decorated with winter scenes and images of the Holy Family. The children who could not yet write would stand on a chair and recite a  few memorized lines in praise of Baby Jesus and  family life. Needless to say, every performer was loudly applauded--and was also rewarded with a few pennies.

The new year was welcomed in the cities with the usual round of parties, dances, and a lot of imbibing. In the towns and in the villages, however, few people stayed up until midnight, except for a few unmarried men who gathered in somebody’s house to drink the night away and play cards.  A few of the old people also waited until midnight, to throw out of the window some already broken dishes and glasses. Most grown-ups retired well before midnight, however. I do not have any solid statistics to either prove or disprove this. As a matter of fact, I do not have any statistics at all, but it is said that births in the last week of September and the first few days of October far outnumbered those of any other period of equal length during the rest of the year. The one customs that villages and cities alike shared was that on New Year’s Day everybody ate lentils and  cotechino (a kind of fatty sausage). The fat would ensure that one would float in abundance in the coming year, and the number of lentils that one ate foretold the number of liras that he or she would earn. Mind you, this was before inflation, when there were only five liras to a dollar, and virtually nobody earned more than 400 liras per month.

La Befana
The day of the Epiphany(January the 6th) was essentially Children’s Day. Stockings were hung on the mantel of  the fireplace, or, in city households, somewhere else in the kitchen. Since Santa was still a stranger in those days, it was old lady La Befana who flew, on her broom, from house to house to fill the children’s stockings. Times were still hard then, and gifts were rather modest.  However, this did not keep the children from feeling happy.
Everyone received one orange, a small torrone, and a few sweets, but the boys  were also given, say, a miniature deck of cards with which to play briscola or Asso piglia tutto  (Ace takes it all), and/or a kind of wooden flute, about six inches long, called zufolo; and the girls also received some hair ornament and/or a simple necklace that they could wear on the following day at school. Those who had been bad supposedly received only coal, but I never heard of anyone who was so unlucky. It was not rare, however, for the parents to give the children one piece of charred wood, together with the goodies.  Young adults normally gave their girlfriends/boyfriends some pieces of an odd looking black candy, shaped like a lump of coal. (I never did, and since never touched the stuff, cannot tell you what it tasted like.)

2. La Strada.  Streets looked just as they did at any other time of the year, because outdoor decorations were still a thing of the future. Actually, some hamlets even lacked regular street lights. However, Christmas music could be heard in a few of the city stores, and the sound of carols blared from an occasional loudspeaker, to induce people to step in, or to be generous to the needy.

Zampognari
Street music of a more traditional type was provided by the zampognari (bagpipers), who normally arrived nine days before Christmas, at the start of the novena celebration. Most of the zampognari were shepherds who took time off, to earn a little extra cash. They symbolized the shepherds who had adored Baby Jesus in Bethlehem, and were now helping to spread the news of his birth.  They usually played in pairs. Their tunes, or pastorales, though somewhat repetitive, were always melodious and downright daunting. And this being the novena season, and since each performer symbolized a shepherd, i.e., a pastore, in Italian, each of their pastorales consisted of nine stanzas.

Many, if not most, of all the Italian zampognari came from Molise. Scapoli (Isernia) still claims the honor of being the zampognari capital of the world (Scottish bagpipers included), even though it now has fewer than 1,000 inhabitants-- a number well below that of the zampognari that used to fan out allover central and southern Italy. And somewhere in Mount Miletto, not far from Scapoli there is a hidden, diamond-encrusted cave where an old man, his beard as white as snow and his right, rosy cheek resting on a bagpipe, sleeps all year long, except on Christmas eve,  when he  plays his silver-toned bagpipe melodies  for all the children of the world.

The New

I could make it short by saying that nowadays everything is done as in the United States, with Christmas music blaring everywhere, and store, home, and outdoor decorations being as bright and as elaborate as any in the world. Actually, however, present-day celebrations in our ancestral land are even more glamorous and extravagant--and, as already pointed out, longer--than in the United States. By and large, the new has not done away with the old, but  has been piled up on top of it, even though most children now see the patriarch of the family bless and kiss the Yule log only if they come back from the cities to spend the holidays with their grandparents. And it must be admitted that in some cases the old traditions are kept alive mainly by the local Tourist Offices, Chambers of Commerce and sales promotion organizations.  For instance, virtually all of today’s zampognari are actors who play in the (new) department stores, some even playing at Italian boutiques as far away as Tokyo, Japan.

Living Nativity Scene
Most traditions, however, survive with no “outside” help. The now ubiquitous Christmas tree is set up right next to the Nativity Scene, and Living Nativity Scenes are now enacted in at least 15 towns and villages of Abruzzo-Molise, because the new heating systems can now keep the actors warm. Sad to say, however, these Living Nativity Scenes have become almost beauty pageants, because the Abruzzi and Molise young ladies, who now wear make up and designer clothes, compete rather fiercely for the role of Virgin Mary.
One would think that eating habits would be the ones most resistant to change, but turkey and capon are becoming a favorite holiday food. The Italian Poultry Association estimates that approximately 1,300,000 turkeys and capons are sold in the entire country. This makes for one bird for about 55 people, but the ratio will likely continue to grow. Panettone, once a rarity, is now very popular.

Babbo Natale
The most evident of the innovations,  far more significant and far more habit-changing than the introduction of the Christmas tree, is the arrival of Santa or Babbo Natale. He is the one who now makes appearances at department stores, parties and elsewhere, and brings  gifts to everyone on Christmas Day--and rather lavish gifts they are.  The children’s habit of writing letters to their parents on Christmas Day is dying out, because children and adults alike are now writing to Babbo Natale, not infrequently on the Internet.   I have even seen some rather pornographic letters. And there are now at least five Web sites one can use to contact Babbo. One of them even features a picture of him dressed only in his hat and boots.

As everybody knows, old Santa Claus has his precursor in old St. Nick, who was originally from Asia Minor, but eventually was buried in Bari, a few miles south of Molise. So, though they now call him Father Christmas, Molisani can truly say that Santa Claus never really left town.

It is important to remember, however, that the old Befana is still alive and well. She still makes her rounds on the evening prior to the Epifania, and still brings gifts to one and all. As a matter of fact, and as most of you know, she even finds the time to fly to Casa Italiana in Washington, D.C., though she arrives there during the day. (Is it because of the difference in time zones?). So, if Santa forgets to bring you everything you asked for, you may want to try the Befana, when she comes your way. It may even help to mention to her that Omero sent you, because she has known me for more than 70 years, a privilege that few of you, and certainly none of the ladies, can claim. Be that as it may, Buone Feste a voi e ai vostri cari, or Happy Holidays to you and yours, dal vostro amico