The final act of love and behind Italian Traditions

Happy friday (felice venerdì)

All good today? (Tutto benne oggi)?

Italian funerals are the final act of love. Is that saying just so romantic and personal? I absolutely love this saying. 

Tradition (Tradizione)


Family

Family is very important for Italians. 

TV Show - Sopranos:

Some typical first names: 

            Femenine             Masculine

1	Maria	Giuseppe
2	Anna	Giovanni
3	Giuseppina	Antonio
4	Rosa	Mario
5	Angela	Luigi
6	Giovanna	Francesco
7	Teresa	Angelo
8	Lucia	Vincenzo
9	Carmela	Pietro
10	Caterina	Salvatore
11	Francesca	Carlo
12	Anna Maria	Franco
13	Antonietta	Domenico
14	Carla	Bruno
15	Elena	Paolo
16	Concetta	Michele
17	Rita	Giorgio
18	Margherita	Aldo
19	Franca	Sergio
20	Paola

Food and Wine

Italy has 20 regions, and each region has its own traditional food and wine. Italian food does not consist of only pizza and spaghetti, and the menu is as varied as the Italian regions. 

Myth

Spaghetti Bolognese. Italians don't combine Spaghetti with Bolognese sauce. Spaghettis are coming from the south of Italy and Bolognese sauce from the northern part of Italy. Usually you eat the sauce with Penne pasta.

What's the difference between Spaghetti and Pasta? 
Spaghetti is a type of pasta or a certain type of dish made from pasta. Pasta is just a general idea, for example, of what you ate last night. Spaghetti is specific.


Feast of the Seven Fishes

The Feast of the Seven Fishes (Festa dei sette pesci), also known as The Vigil (La Vigilia), is a celebration of Christmas Eve (Vigilia di Natale) with meals of fish and other seafood.

It is believed to have originated in Southern Italy and is not a known tradition in many parts of Italy. Today, it is a feast that typically consists of seven different seafood (frutti di mare)dishes. This celebration commemorates the wait, the Vigilia di Natale, for the midnight birth of the baby Jesus (Gesu).

Tradition

The long tradition of eating seafood on Christmas Eve dates from the Roman Catholic tradition of abstinence – in this case, refraining from the consumption of meat or milk products – on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, as well as during Lent and on the eve of specific holy days. As no meat or butter could be used on such days, observant Catholics would instead eat fish, typically fried in oil.

The meal may include seven, eight, or even nine specific fishes that are considered traditional. The most famous dish Southern Italians are known for is baccalà (salted cod fish). The custom of celebrating with a simple fish such as baccalà is attributed to the greatly impoverished regions of Southern Italy. Fried smelts, calamari and other types of seafood have been incorporated into the Christmas Eve dinner over the years.

Symbolism

There are many hypotheses for what the number "7" represents. Seven is the most repeated number in the Bible and appears over 700 times.

One popular theory is the number represents completion, as shown in Genesis 2:2: "By the seventh day God completed the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work." 

Other theories include: that the number represents the seven Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church; and that seven is a number representing perfection; the traditional Biblical number for divinity is three, and for Earth is four, and the combination of these numbers, seven, represents God on Earth, or Jesus Christ.

A typical Christmas Eve meal

The meal's components may include some combination of anchovies, whiting, lobster, sardines, dried salt cod, smelts, eels, squid, octopus, shrimp, mussels and clams. The menu may also include pastas, vegetables, baked or fried kale patties, baked goods and homemade wine. This tradition remains very popular to this day. 

Popular dishes

Baccala, Baked cod, Cod fish balls in tomato sauce, Deep fried cod, Deep fried fish/shrimp, Deep fried scallops, Fried smelts, Seafood salad (Insalata di mare (seafood salad), Linguine with anchovy, clam, lobster, tuna, or crab sauce, Marinated eel, Octopus salad, Oyster shooters, Scungilli salad, Stuffed calamari in tomato sauce, Stuffed baked lobsters, Stuffed baked quahogs, Whiting

Music

Italians love music. Music is part of their lives. Opera, an Italian tradition, is popular among Italians.

Religion

The majority of Italians are Roman Catholics.

Vatican City

Emblem of Vatican City

Vatican City in Rome

Pope Benedict XVI

      Interiors

Funerals

The Italian funerals, as the final act of love provided for those that pass away, are particularly moving. Candles remain lit throughout the wake. Relatives and friends participate in the wake, say prayers in front of the casket and offer condolences to the family. Preparation for the burial usually includes a church Mass attended by family and friends who afterwards accompany the deceased to his final resting place.

Quotes (Citare)

Leonardo da Vinci

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."

"A well-spent day brings happy sleep."

"There are three classes of people: Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see."

"Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art."

"Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it."

"Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?"

Galileo Galilei

"I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him."

"Doubt is the father of invention."

"You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself."

Giuseppe Tomasi

"If you want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."


"While there's death, there's hope."

"The faculty of self-deception,essential requisite for anyone wanting to guide others."

"Every time one sees a relative one finds a thorn."

Jokes (scherzi)

Film : Driving While Italian

Rocco excitedly tells his mother (madre) he's fallen in love (amore) and that
he is going to get married.  He says, 'Just for fun, Ma, I'm
going to bring over 3 women and you try and guess which one
I'm going to marry.'  Rocco's mother agrees.

The next day, he brings three beautiful women into the house 

and sits them down on the couch and they chat for a while.
Rocco says, 'Okay, Ma, guess which one I'm going to marry?'.

Mother immediately replies, 'The one on the right.'

That's amazing, Ma. You're right. How did you know??????'

The Italian mother replied 'I don't like her.'