CHRISTMAS EVE
Traditions and customs of Christmas in the Italy of the mid-19th century in an engaging tale
Traditions and Customs of Christmas in Mid-19th Century Italy”
“Christmas Eve” by Caterina Pigorini Beri is a vivid portrayal of Christmas traditions in the Apennine region of Marche at the end of the 19th century. Through meticulous descriptions of customs, songs, rituals, and typical Christmas foods, the author paints a deep fresco of the religiosity and shared values of those rural communities. The story is structured as a first-person account of a night spent by the protagonist, the author’s alter ego, among the homes of some peasant acquaintances, rediscovering the intimate and collective meaning of the holiday. The narration flows smoothly and captivatingly, with constant scene changes among different homes and a lively style, rich in dialect expressions and idioms that capture the local color.
The characters, though sketched with quick and essential traits, gain an intense humanity in the pain and faith that transpire from their speeches. This is the case with Pacino, the wise old man with cunning wisdom, or poor widow Carminella, mourning her recently deceased son, tearfully remembering his kindness and care. Through these figures emerges the communal and supportive dimension of those small villages, where sharing food and hearth accompanied the most important moments of the year.
But beyond nostalgic recollection, the story also highlights, with a critical eye, the social and cultural changes of a world destined to disappear with the advance of modernity. Thus, the protagonist, an educated and conscious alter ego of the author, observes with a mix of tenderness and regret the customs of the “countryside,” sensing their fragility. Christmas Eve thus becomes a metaphor for the sunset of an era.
In summary, a little gem of folklore narrative that blends accurate ethnographic research with the ability to convey the authentic feeling of that popular world. A precious testimony that today allows us to rediscover ways of life and lost values.
Pigorini Beri’s work gives us an image of Christmas with an ancient and almost sacred flavor, intimate and familiar, celebrated with secular rituals passed down from generation to generation. At the center of everything is the log, the focal point of the home and the very symbol of the perpetuation of the family, around which people gather for dinner and vigil. The food, with traditional dishes like celery, cod, Christmas sweets, and the religious dimension of the festival, with highly attended night services, assumes great importance.
Today’s Christmas, however, appears more secular and consumeristic, dominated by lights and decorative apparatus, frantic shopping, and restaurant feasts. Missing is that family intimacy and that magical sense of the home hearth. Even on the spiritual and ecclesial level, there is less participation in the religious meaning of the Nativity.
And yet some fundamental values remain unchanged: the importance of affections, generosity, sharing; the value of transmitting knowledge and traditions to new generations; Christmas as a moment of regeneration, of reflections and resolutions for the coming year.
Perhaps today we tend to idealize that ancient Christmas, forgetting the immense hardships and constraints of those rural populations. Yet it harbored a poetry, a sacredness, a sense of the essential that should make us reflect on the consumeristic drifts and the spiritual void of our high-tech Christmases. A fruitful comparison between past and present can help us rediscover what really matters, beyond folklore and appearance.
Starting from the analysis of the text of “Christmas Eve,” we can broaden the perspective to more fully outline the profile of the author Caterina Pigorini Beri and her role in the cultural context of the time.
Originally from Emilia, Beri was a teacher, writer, and collector of popular traditions with a particular interest in the ethnographic and folkloristic field. Her writings on customs, traditions, and superstitions of the regions she visited (Calabria, Marche, etc.) contributed to enriching the knowledge of the cultural heritage of the subordinate classes, until then almost ignored by “high” culture.
Pigorini Beri can be counted among those intellectual figures who, between the 19th and 20th centuries, worked in the field, collecting directly from the living voice of peasants songs, legends, expressions of the rural world. Along with other folklorists like Giuseppe Pitrè, Costantino Nigra, Antonio Gianandrea, our author made a significant contribution to the studies on national folklore, in line with the positivist interest in traditional culture as a manifestation of the “soul of the people.”
The ethnological sensitivity of Pigorini Beri is reflected in her ability to convey, through a communicative style, the mentality, worldview, and religiosity that transpire from the words of her rural interlocutors in the examined text. The writer there succeeds in combining the rigor of field research with a narrative vein that makes her work enjoyable to a wider audience.
In conclusion, Caterina Pigorini Beri, with her folklore writings like Christmas Eve, has the merit of having offered not only a scientific but also a literary contribution to the reconstruction of Italian peasant civilization between the 19th and 20th centuries.
