Italian Christmas Cuisine

Italy is well-known for going big on celebrations and making the most of each moment, especially for significant events like Christmas. In this blog post I would like to focus specifically on Italian Christmas traditions and the run up to Christmas. This post is inspired by my good Italian friend who provided me with all of the information of her typical Italian Christmas.

Christmas usually begins four Sundays before the big day and these are named Advent Sundays. On Advent Sundays, families get together and one person lights a candle to begin the countdown to Christmas, and this continues every week with the candle being passed around.

On Christmas Eve, a big, hearty breakfast is eaten in the morning in order to fill up until dinner as everyone then returns home to have a four-course meal, sometimes with grandparents. A traditional Christmas Eve dinner will consist of fish, canapes, caviar, salads, fruits, dried fruits and coffee. After the big dinner is eaten, there is usually a present exchange and everyone opens gifts.

On Christmas day another four-course meal is eaten. This one, however, usually entails more meats, mozzarella (typically an appetizer), stuffed pasta with sauce, and followed by more cold meats - but usually with dried or fresh fruit. This is followed up with sweets or chocolate. The Christmas afternoon is spent going to the Christmas markets!

And for Boxing Day, the day is usually spent celebrating and eating a traditional wild vegetable soup with meat and of course, plenty of parmesan! Following this, many people often visit the lights of Salerno, eat panettone and listen to Christmas songs!

I hope you have enjoyed reading all about these typical Italian foods at Christmas as well as some other traditions! Let me know if you eat anything similar or have similar traditions! I hope you all had a wonderful festive season (if you celebrate it) and a Happy New Year!

-Sophs