Calendar and Culinary Traditions

The calendar has always measured time by separating working days from holidays. Sundays, religious and civil solemnities, celebrations of a individual and family members, in rural society they were often coinciding with the key moments of seasonal events.

It was solemnized the arrival of spring, the sowing and threshing, the harvest of the grapes, the racking, the killing of the pig.

They were tied to these feasts, ceremonies and liturgies tend to require a good outcome of rural operations, bridling bad luck.

Among these rituals, Two in particular set the tone for the festivities: the religious liturgies and opportunities to eat better and more than the usual.

Man's Relationship with food has always gone beyond its pure function as a subsistence. The Bible speaks of the most holy foods that make "holy," that is, pure, the men who take them.

So the party is he also sanctified through a food of sacred significance, with the psychological motivations such as the need to to participate, to express abundance, to communicate with one's own similar. A special bond was created in the community, because it was believed that those who ate the same food transferred the qualities to others.

The choice of food determined the quality of the feast, and creation was fundamental of exclusive and special recipes dedicated to it. The table, and that in particular, it was a moment of aggregation for the belonging to the same community, and sharing the same food It was a tribute of friendship and respect. That's why the Holiday-related foods have become part of the popular heritage gastronomic and folkloric experience of the Italian regions. Today, the superabundant availability, the omnipresence of supply, the levelling of socio-economic classes, has almost eliminated the ancient expectations and dependencies between feasting and food.