Carnival

At the moment Italy and many other European countries are celebrating the Carnival season. This is a very old, popular tradition celebrated by dressing up in costumes and masks. It’s celebrated every year before the beginning of Lent (Lent is the period of 40 days before Easter in the Christian calendar when people do penance or fast to remember the 40 days spent by Jesus in the desert), and usually it occurs between the end of January and middle of February. The most important days are on “Fat Thursday” and “Fat Tuesday”, but every town has its own traditions and in many places there are also celebrations on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The distinctive element is that in this period all jokes are permitted and you have to dress up in costume.
Usually  the festivities are held in the streets and squares of the towns and cities with parades of carnival floats and masks.
Carnival originates in the pre-Christian celebrations like the ancient Romans’s Saturnalia and the Greeks’s Dionisiache, in response to the people’s need for a time of freedom and fun where anything goes. Hence the Roman proverb “Semel in anno licet insane” (“once a year you’re allowed to go crazy”).

The most popular celebrations in Italy are in Venice and Viareggio, Brazil also has the famous Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.

Some interesting facts:

The Carnival of Viareggio was born at the end of the 19th century when some of the middle-classes protested against the system. Even today (as in many other places of Italy), floats and masks are caricatures of famous people from politics, culture and entertainment.
The Carnival of Venice is famous for the wonderful masks and the incredible atmosphere which prevails in the city. Linked to Venice’s theatrical tradition are the comic characters who are often represented during the parades: Pulcinella, Arlecchino, Pantalone, Colombina and Brighella are the most famous.
Ivrea is famous for its Battle of Oranges. Participants are divided into two groups: some arranged in a cart while the others are on foot, and they go through the streets throwing oranges at each other. The only protection is to wear the berretto frigio, a red cap like the one used by the French revolutionaries.  This parade is also made to commemorate an old civic revolution of the city against a bad government.

Here in our area (central-east of Italy) there are many traditions and in our city, during carnival, many parades of floats and groups take place around the streets. Adults, children and young people gather together in the streets dancing and parading to the sound of lively music.

In this period, families and shops prepare typical cakes, different in every area of our peninsula. The most common are the Castagnole, small fritters in the shape of a chestnut, spiced and covered in sugar; Frappe (also called, Chiacchiere, Bugie, Cenci, etc..), puff pastry, cut into strips, fried and coated with icing sugar;  Strufoli, irregular-shaped fritters, almost as big as an orange and coated with honey (to get the best flavour, the honey must be heated and the Strufoli are dipped and eaten when the honey is still warm). The Sanguinaccio dolce is a sweet cream dessert made of bitter chocolate, which can be eaten by dipping into it with finger biscuits (savoiardi). In the regional traditions of Liguria, Marche, Abruzzo, (where it is eaten spread on bread), Calabria and Campania the Sanguinaccio dolce is flavored with fresh pig’s blood, which provides it with a characteristic acidic aftertaste.
In our area and in other areas of central Italy, another typical carnival dessert are the Ravioli dolci. There are many recipes for them, but the most famous of the area have two forms: one is a ravioli  the size of a hand in a half-moon shape, made of pastry, decorated with sugar on top with a filling made of ricotta, cocoa and sugar, baked in the oven. The other type is fried, this kind of ravioli are smaller like the pasta from which it takes the name; it also has a half-moon shape and is covered with icing sugar. The filling has three varieties: it can be made of chestnut and cocoa, a cream custard and the last is with ricotta, cinnamon, sugar and liqueur.

Do you know any other Carnival traditions from Italy and around the world? Share them with us, leave us a comment!