Hello beautiful friends! I hope 2015 is giving you joy and laughter. I wanted to share my Christmas away from home with my not so new family. 🙂

This is actually my third Italian Christmas and I’m getting there. You know Christmas in the Philippines is very similar to European and American Christmas as we are under the colony of Spain and America but still Italian Christmas is a little different. I can say different because it’s way more formal. Yes, in the Philippines it is like a super big Holiday that starts in September and ends like February lol. I know it’s already very commercialized that way but that’s how crazy we are. We love Christmas Holidays to bits.

In Italy, Christmas Holiday starts December as far as I can remember my husband told me that it formally starts 8th of December the feast of Immaculate Conception where they do Christmas lighting and ends after the feast of Ephiphany. What I love about the Italian Christmas is their own tradition. They have the so called “presepio” which is basically the manger or nativity but the Italian way is more of high quality Manger because they are all moving through well planned and engineered nativity. It’s not the same Manger that we see with the image of baby Jesus and his parents but it is the whole Christmas community, the life in the past with night and morning demonstration. I just adore it and I wish I am with my neice when I visited these tradition. It is really for kids. All parents took their children to this tradition. Would you believe they even made real Christmas community. I visited in Central Italy where the whole mountain is all about the “presepio” how volunteers brave the cold weather to participate in the Nativity and continously act as the Christmas community in the past. Some dancers, some workers like shoe makers, bread makers etc etc. It was marvelous. I swear one of the best things to visit in Italy during Christmas. Every village has it and you can compare how much effort each village made. Every village has unique and magnific display of their “presepio”.

Here’s a picture of “presepio” from Montesicuro, Ancona. I took this photo two years ago because I was so amazed and I also met the old artist doing this. 🙂 It’s big Christmas Nativity and all of them are moving! Amazing!

Christmas with family is very formal in Italy. Well, I can’t speak the whole Italy as my husband is native of Padova, a town near Venice. We usually spent Christmas in Padova. We have our Christmas lunch on December 25 where you imagine to devour like there’s no tomorrow. Well, yes, Christmas everywhere means gluttony lol. And the Italian Christmas will always be as sumptuous as it can be. Imagine all the authentic Italian foods cooked entirely in an Italian kitchen. Oh-uh! you can literally say RIP diet lol. In our family, my sister in law does all the cooking for the entire family. After feasting with the Italian foods it ends up with their typical Christmas cake called “panettone or pandoro”. I belong to the Pandoro side. Panettone has some fillings inside like the raisins that I don’t like. Pandoro, on the other hand, has like icing which is designed like a Christmas tree in white snow. It has the cake and the white powder sugar that you have to shake in the cake before eating. Italian way. 🙂 The Italian coffee finishes the Christmas lunch and the exchange gift (my favorite part) starts!

My husband and I messing up in the kitchen lol

Here’s typical Italian Christmas cake called Panettone. Sorry, I don’t have photo of Pandoro. Next time! I will share the Pandoro tradition. 🙂

It is way formal to the Christmas tradition I grew up with where we have “noche buena” on the eve of Christmas after the Christmas mass. And the Filipino way, there will be no occassion without the so called “karaoke” yes, we are addicted to singing and belting those high notes as Mariah carey could sing lol. And oh! of course photos we love taking photos during christmas to share laughter and joy while taking photos and to plant the memories that every Christmas.

I hope to share to you more of the Italian tradition. Have a great year ahead beautiful people.

Stay fabulous always!

love,

anne