Comenius Project 2012-2014

1. Comenius Project 2012-2014 Festivals and holidays in ourcountries: Theirphilosophy, traditions, and newcustoms. 2012-1-PL1-COM06-28219-4

2. EasterMonday in the view ofourgrandparents

3. Ladies and gentlemen, you’re goingtodiscover the taste of long ago, when family tieswere the mostprecioustreasure and friendshipwas a deeplyfelt feeling. Imagineyou’re dwelling in the northofTuscany, amonggentlehillsscatteredwithhamlets, the soundsof nature allaroundyou. And majesticmountainsagainst the sky. Welcome to Lunigiana. Welcome toouryesterday. Thisishowourgrandparentsusedto celebrate EasterMonday, broughttoyouthankstoourstudents in the secondyear. Enjoyyour vision.

4. The following slides will tell you about how our grandparents used to celebrate Easter Monday (in Italian, ‘Pasquetta’ – i.e. ‘little Easter’ – or ‘Lunedì dell’Angelo’ – i.e. ‘Angel Monday’). Students in the 2nd year talked to their grannies and grandpas and here’s what they found out. …Enjoy it!

5. Sara Tamagna An interview with my granny Carmela, who is 76 and lives in Mulazzo, a small village in the mountains of northern Tuscany.

6. Then, they started to pray while entering the church and said prayers to the Virgin. Once Mass was over, people laid their cloths on the grass and gave the priest something to eat and drink. Traditional food included a frittata (omelette) without salame (salami) – because you weren’t allowed to eat salami at Easter – tagliatelle, tortad’erbi (a pie filled with vegetables), tortadiriso (a cake made with rice) as well as the typical Easter cakes, canestrello and focaccia dolce. When lunch was over, people used to go back to church where they said prayers while the priest gave blessings to the Virgin. When the day was done, people packed up and walked back home, happy for the merry day they had spent. Long ago, in the 1950s, Easter Monday was a very important day. It was also rather tiring because in the morning men and women in our small village, together with their sons, used to fill a small basket with their lunch. After that, they walked to Madonna del Monte, a tiny hamlet up the mountains around Mulazzo. This was a place where people used to go to attend Mass at eleven in the morning. During their stroll to the hamlet, women used to chat while men sang and children played and had fun, though the road was steep and unmade. After a two hours’ walk, people reached the place and sat in the park outside the church. Unfortunately, nowadays nobody walks up to the Madonna del Monte any longer, and in tiny hamlets and small villages in the mountains here around people meet no more as our grandparents used to do.

7. Clivia Vora My nextdoorneighbours, a very kind lady and her husband, told me how they used to celebrate the Easter week, from Holy Monday to Easter Sunday.

8. They used to go to Mass early in the morning. On Holy Wednesday (or Spy Wednesday) people used to recall the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus. At mass, people could hear noises recalling the Flagellation (or Scourging) of Christ such as the whip hitting Jesus and the hammer strokes when he was nailed to the cross. On the evening of Maundy Thursday (or Holy Thursday), people at mass used to celebrate the washing of the feet and the Last Supper, as we still do today. On Good Friday (or Holy Friday) people used to celebrate the Via Crucis (the Way of the Cross). On Silent Saturday (or Holy Saturday), at around ten in the morning, bells were ringing in order to announce Christ’s resurrection. On Easter Sunday the High Mass was celebrated in Latin. At lunch, people used to eat maccheroni with ragù, a typical meat and tomato sauce. Maccheroni were made on Saturday and let dry on clean cloths all night long. As a second dish, they used to have roasted lamb or kid with roasted potatoes. In the end, they had typical cakes which lasted for many days onwards. Lovers used to exchange cakes: the girls gave her man the so-called campanaro decorated with 21 boiled eggs; the boy gave his lady a marzipan lamb.

9. Melissa Tagliatti I talked to Amelia, a lady who lives next to me in Pontremoli and who was born in 1932. She told me about how she used to celebrate Easter when she was a young girl.

10. At the time, people could afford less than today. She told me that her family used to make timpani (oven-baked pasta) for Easter lunch, together with fried artichokes, courgettes and asparagus, and lamb. If the weather was fine, the whole family went for a picnic in a wonderful meadow nearby in the company of a bottle of wine. Once lunch was over, Amelia and her sisters (there were no sons in the family) enjoyed making flower necklaces which they gave her mother in order to thank her for the good food she had prepared. At around 7 in the evening they all went back home to prepare the scarcella, a biscuit which was eaten in the next few days. For dinner they had left-overs from lunch. After dinner, they all used to play shadow games around the hearth. Long ago, people knew how to enjoy themselves with what little they had.

11. Elisa Putamorsi An interview with my grandmother.

12. On Easter Monday, children would play in the meadows. My grandmother told me about the games she and her friends used to play such as hide-and-seek, which they liked most of all, and blind man’s buff. My grandmother says that they were happy like that, and that we young people should try and come back to those times when young boys and girls had fun gathering wood and looking for chestnuts up in the woods. It would be a pity to forget about this simplicity as it is part of our legacy with our past, our family, and our land. In my tiny country village, Valenza, when my grandmother was a little girl people used to celebrate Easter Monday with a picnic in the meadows. People used to eat typical dishes from the village cuisine such as omelelettes with salami and ham, and cakes. On Easter Monday, people from the village used to gather and spend the day together in the country to eat traditional food made with simple ingredients that people had toiled to grow. Though, people were happy with what they had because they were a ‘big family’ where they knew each other well.

13. Arianna Volpi I asked my grandmother, who is 75 and lives in the village of Zeri, how she used to celebrate Easter Monday when she was a young girl.

14. She used to spend the day with her close friends and relatives: they all had a long walk to recall the journey of the Disciples to Emmaus. Once they had walked back home, they had a great supper all together. There were typical dishes such as lamb meat, fried artichokes, cheese-topped pizza. The typical Easter cakes were the ciambelle (i.e. donuts), the chocolate eggs, and the colomba, the traditional Italian oven-baked cake in the form of a dove. After supper, they enjoyed the rest of the night by chatting and playing card games until late. Talking to my grandmother made me understand that the way she used to celebrate Easter Monday and the way I do are quite similar. The thing that stroke me most, though, is that on the evening before Easter Sunday farmers used to gather bunches of olive tree branches which the kids would bring to mass next morning to have them blessed by the priest: when they went back home, they would plant them in the garden. She explained that this festivity was introduced by the Italian government in the years following World War II with the aim of extending the celebration for Easter.

15. Thankyou foryourattention This slide show was brought to you by the students of the I.I.S. ‘Belmesseri’ at Villafranca in Lunigiana, Italy. …Be our guests in October 2013!