Italian Christmas Traditions

An Italian Christmas is long. It opens in early December, when families set up the tree and the nativity scene, and it doesn’t close until January 6, when an old woman comes down the chimney to fill the children’s stockings. In between come a saint who brings presents on a donkey, a Christmas Eve dinner without meat, and a cake from Milan that the whole country now shares. Customs change from one region to the next, so take this as a map, not a rulebook.

December 8: the tree and the presepe go up

When: December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (l’Immacolata), a public holiday in Italy, when schools and offices close.

What people do: By tradition this is the day to put up the Christmas tree and the presepe, the nativity scene. Some cities keep their own date: in Milan it’s December 7, the feast of the city’s patron, Sant’Ambrogio; in Bari, December 6, for San Nicola. Everything stays up until the Epiphany on January 6.

Where it comes from: The dates follow the Church calendar and each city’s patron saint. The Immacolata simply became the natural start of the season in most of the country.

The presepe

When: From early December to January 6.

What people do: The presepe (also spelled presepio) is the centerpiece of Christmas in many Italian homes and in every church: a model of the Nativity, with Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and the animals, often set in a whole landscape of hills, houses, streams and tiny figures of villagers at work. The scene stays up through the Epiphany, when the Magi arrive at the manger. Zampognari, bagpipe players, have long played their pastoral tunes in front of the nativity scenes.

Where it comes from: The word comes from the Latin praesepe, “manger”. The story most Italians tell begins at Christmas 1223, in Greccio, a village in the hills near Rieti, where St. Francis of Assisi staged the Nativity to help people imagine Bethlehem. The account comes from his first biographer, Thomas of Celano, writing a few years later. Greccio is often called the “first presepe”, but historians point out that images of the Nativity, and a Nativity chapel in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore, existed before it. What Greccio did was give the custom its most loved story.

Our card The Mountain Village has its own presepe, set up in the square of a stone village below snowy peaks, while the bells swing in the tower at dusk.

December 13: Santa Lucia

When: The night of December 12 to 13.

What people do: In parts of northern Italy, Santa Lucia is the gift-bringer, not Father Christmas. She is said to travel on a donkey on the eve of her feast, leaving presents for good children. Families leave out something for her, such as coffee and cake, with water and hay for the donkey. In Sicily, and above all in her home city of Siracusa, the day is kept with processions: her statue is carried through the streets on December 13.

Where it comes from: Lucia was a young Christian of Siracusa, martyred around the year 304. Her name is linked to lux, the Latin word for light, and her feast falls in the darkest weeks of the year. The same saint is behind Sweden’s Lucia processions; our page on December 13 in Sweden tells that story.

La Vigilia: Christmas Eve

When: December 24, la vigilia di Natale.

What people do: For many families this is the most important meal of Christmas: the cena della Vigilia, the Christmas Eve dinner. Traditionally it’s a meatless meal, eating di magro, and in many regions that means fish. What lands on the table depends entirely on where your family comes from. After dinner, many go to Midnight Mass.

Where it comes from: In the Catholic calendar, the vigil of a great feast was once a day of fasting and abstinence from meat. The Church no longer requires it, but the meatless Christmas Eve survives in the kitchen. It also traveled with Italian emigrants: in the United States it became the Feast of the Seven Fishes, a name that many people in Italy have never heard. Our guide to the Italian-American Christmas Eve fish dinner explains how it grew.

Christmas Day and panettone

When: December 25, Natale.

What people do: A long lunch with the family, finished with panettone, the tall, domed sweet bread studded with candied citron and raisins. Presents may come from Babbo Natale, Father Christmas.

Where it comes from: Panettone is a Milanese cake. Legend places its invention at the court of the Visconti, the lords of Milan, in the 14th century; the Treccani dictionary notes that it’s probably older still. Whatever its origin, it’s now eaten at Christmas all over Italy.

December 26: Santo Stefano

When: December 26, the feast of Santo Stefano, St. Stephen.

What people do: It’s a second day of holiday that stretches Christmas out, usually spent with family or friends. Going to Mass is not an obligation that day, so for many it’s simply a quieter, slower day after the big one.

Where it comes from: Stephen was a deacon in Jerusalem and, according to the Acts of the Apostles, the first Christian martyr. His feast has always followed Christmas Day, but in Italy it only became a national public holiday in 1947, to give people a longer break. It’s the same day Ireland keeps as St. Stephen’s Day, with very different customs: see our guide to Christmas in Ireland.

January 6: the Befana

When: The night of January 5 to 6, the Epiphany (l’Epifania).

What people do: The Befana, a kindly but very ugly old woman, comes down the chimney in the night and fills children’s stockings or shoes with presents and sweets. Children who haven’t been good get a lump of coal instead. The Epiphany closes the Christmas season: the presepe and the tree come down, and the holidays are over.

Where it comes from: Her name is a popular form of Epifania, the feast that remembers the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus, and her gifts recall theirs. Our page on Italy’s January gift-bringer has the full story.

Keeping the tradition far from home

Italian families abroad have kept their Christmas with great care, and some customs, like the Seven Fishes, took on a new life far from Italy. A few ideas if you’re far from home:

• Set up the presepe on December 8. Even a small one on a shelf, left up until January 6, gives the children a season of their own, and building the landscape around it can become a family project.
• Keep the Vigilia meatless. Whether you serve seven fishes or one good fish soup, it’s the same Christmas Eve your grandparents kept.
• Leave out something for Santa Lucia or the Befana. If your family comes from the north, a coffee and a little hay on the night of December 12 will be understood. Everyone else can wait for January 5.
• Share a panettone over the phone. Slice one at the same time as the family in Italy, across the time zones, and compare.

The Christmas greeting in Italian

The Italian for Merry Christmas is Buon Natale, and for the whole season, right up to the Epiphany, Buone Feste. Our guide to writing Buon Natale in a card explains the words, how to write to nonna and nonno, and how Italians sign off with love.

Cards for an Italian Christmas

Our cards from Italy start with a mountain village at dusk, its presepe in the square, and continue with a little piazza where a carved wooden presepe stands beside a frozen fountain, pigeons all around. Each card carries Buon Natale as its greeting. Add a few words of your own under the greeting, and schedule the card to arrive on Christmas Eve, in time for the Vigilia.