How to spend an Italian Christmas Eve

Member

By sabrinacareer
User-Submitted Article

Article Rating: (6 Ratings)

spend an Italian Christmas Eve

You do not have to fly to Italy to have a traditional Italian Christmas, you can have it right in your own home. In Italy the dinner of December 24th is considered more important than the Christmas lunch. Typically the dinner is called "lean" because of the strong Catholic inheritance that prohibited eating meat on that day and now it is a normal tradition

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Step 1

First prepare the table in with festive themes such as a red tablecloth and candles
Step 2

For food prepare appetizers such as smoked salmon
Step 3

The first dish you will eat is spaghetti with clams or a simple tortellini soup.
Step 4

The other main entree' is the fish (it can be a trout, cod or stockfish or eel), usually it is wrapped in foil and baked in the oven with rosemary potatoes depending on the fish. The stockfish and eel are usually fried.
Step 5

For dessert you will usually eat dried fruits like dates and figs, but also Panforte which is a dry cake with honey and almonds, and maybe you will open either a panettone (dry cake with dried fruits) or pandoro (which is softer than panettone and does not have dried fruits)
Step 6

Then you will play tombola, which is a game very similar to bingo (you can either play money or food)
Step 7

Around 11:00 P.M you will get ready to go to the midnight mass and attend the hour long sermon as you admire the church's nativity set
Step 8

If you do not attend the mass at midnight you will start opening presents (if you attended mass then you will open them at your return).
Step 9

Then you will go to bed exhausted but looking forward to the next day's big Christmas lunch.