..when I was a teenager it was all another world. Me and my friends were happy with very little, we enjoyed roaming around for long walks together, we hadn't so much to eat like today, but none cares and we thought it was life was beautiful that way.. I tell you when we were… Christmas holidays Teenagers Young guys Settled men Old men

Here Christmas is called Ceppo and Ceppo was a kind of Santa Claus who came the 24th night to bring toffees or apples to the younger ones. My friend, Aldo, told me that when his father was a boy, in the 19th century, the ceppo was also a wooden block usually put at the windowsills, a bit dressed up with a candle behind. The children went around, home by home, discussing which one was the best, but this custom we didn't know when we were small boys and the Vigilia's (Advent) night we put a fastellino, which is a small group of woods fasten together, close to the fireplace to be used by the Ceppo when he arrived to warm up himself. The days before Christmas the teacher made us write a message to our parents on which we had to express all our good intentions for the coming year: to be good and obey, to study and help home. At the Christmas day everybody put his message under his father's plate so that during the meal the elder ones, one by one, could read it and each child could receive compliments from them. The luckiest ones received a coin or a toffee too, but in my home it wasn't possible so we were satisfied by a caress or a compliment.
In some places, like in Monteriggioni, on the Christmas day's afternoon, during the holy ceremonies, the daily prayers and the rosary performance, the youngest boys performed poems taught by the priest. They stood in front of the altar in a long queue while in the benches all the parents and relatives were sitting and listening. For the rest of the day, though we didn't received toys, called balocchi, as the nowadays children, we stayed home to ruzzare, to play together.

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Young guys

The Christmas Advent' s night we used to go to the midnight mess. We went walking all together while the bells started to call us. In the church we found the hut, the crib, since in those days none used to made it home, but you could visit it in some, neither all, churches. While, Christmas tree wasn't there at all. This and the houses' decorations came later on, after the war.
When I was a young boy, me and my friends used to wait for the midnight mess doing a veglia, which means chatting together, among friends or playing tombola sometimes, but without money. In this game we used dried beans or chick peas to cover the papers' numbers. I had never dance: I didn't like it too much, but at that time to dance it was one of the few amusements for young boys and girls. Take my wife, for instance: after the midnight mess when she was a girl she always went to dance to some hut or stable along with other young people. Someone brought a barrel organ and they went on dancing and enjoying for a long time. Then they went back home, on foot of course. But the most beautiful parties were those for the New Year. In Monteriggioni there was a real perfect organiser of parties: he called orchestras from Siena. In those times the village was full of people and families living there. So there were a lot of girls and young people: for these parties the girls dressed up in colourful, unseen, low necked clothes. Many came from the countryside farms: at the gate of the village I remember the Police officer overlooking the crown. He didn't allow the young to come in. There were a lot of people who couldn't effort and stood outside the gate to see. Just stand to see all these young people gathered to dance there it was a pleasure!

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Settled men

For Christmas meal we, peasants, didn't use to gather together with relatives coming from other houses. In those times we were already too many in one house. In my own home we were eleven daily; so for Christmas we stayed on our own. The meal consisted of the traditional dishes of our land: a soup of capon and tagliatini, which is a eggs' home made pasta, damp capon and Christmas cakes. In those times this means that there were the cavallucci biscuits home made by our housewives, a panforte and a black panforte, which was a Kilo of panpepato bought in Siena by the capoccio. The cavallucci were distributed one for each person, while the panforte was divided in twelve slices, since the last one was kept by the housewife to made the migliacci, when the pig would have been killed, after the holidays. The migliacci are a kind of cakes made by the pig's blood. Nowadays they are very rare to find since you cannot kill the pig home, otherwise you would pay a fine. They are made of old bread, cooked into water with a mixture of panforte, cavallucci, sugar, candy of citron and few spices you could buy at the village shop. They are eaten cold with some sugar added on the top, if you like it. In those times Christmas's panforte and cavallucci should be enough to made afterwards the migliacci; nowadays we eat also ricciarelli and drink spumante. In those times for Christmas holidays we used to drink vinsanto or a sweet wine. Everybody knew that in Milan there was another Christmas cake called panettone, but here we hadn't. So my brother in law when he was a soldier used to tell his mates from Milan that our panforte was much better than their Milan's cake, though he had never seen neither taste the panettone.

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Old men

When we went to church, we went all, elders and young ones; all sang 'Thou came down from the stars', which was the only Christmas song known.
In the villages in those days many kind of travellers came through: some players of a strange kind of accordion, the chimney sweeps too. In the countryside homes we could meet only the poorest ones begging bread, eating what was left them, sleeping in hut or stables, living of other people's charity.
When you get old, especially for Christmas holidays we love to spend time with nephews since it seems to go back to our own childhood. My nieces are waiting Santa Claus, nowadays, and they are all excited already, but when I was a child our imagination run to the Befana day, she was the one who brought us some presents into the socks. Each one of us took a sock and hung up it to the fireplace. There, as it was made for the Ceppo, one could put small pieces of wood fasten together so that the coming Befana could warm up by using it. Then we children went to sleep very early and the next morning we run to see what was inside our socks, though it was always the same: a cavalluccio, an apple, an orange, two walnuts, some dried figs. The toys were never there, but for us that sock was the best we could expect in our childhood.
For the Befana day, we had the sweets we called chicchi, 'seeds', but the rich families' children had some toys too from Christmas's Ceppo. It could have been a doll for girls or a wooden little horse or a chariot for boys. Once a friend of mine had a chariot with ox, but he didn't like this present! Who knows? Perhaps he felt it was something from the poor people world, something for peasants.. You know? If I had it..! Anyway, to be honest, we enjoyed as we were.

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Sweets

...we weren't used to eat sweets every day, but we had them only during holidays, such as Christmas, Easter, Carnival and All Saints' day.. Il panpepato Between all the types of panforte, the panpepato one is the most rough, and probably also the most ancient one.

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