Natale e la Vigilia

The Christmas season in Italy rests on the Catholic calendar, and its table is organised around the fast that precedes the feast. The Vigilia, the eve of 24 December, was kept as a day of abstinence from meat, and Time-Life — The Cooking of Italy records the Christmas observance in this spirit, with the meatless supper of the eve set against the abundance of the day that follows. The customs belong to the whole peninsula, but they take their substance from the regions: the sea in the coastal south, the pastures and the pig in the north and the interior.

The Vigilia is a meal of restraint made abundant by variety. Because meat was forbidden, the table turned to fish, vegetables, salt cod and eggs, and the supper became a sequence of modest things prepared with attention. Time-Life — The Cooking of Italy presents it as a fast in name only, since the number of dishes and the care given to them make it a feast of another kind. Fish of the sea and of the lagoon, together with baccalà and eel, are theordinary matter of the eve in many regions, and the choice varies with what the coast, the river or the market provides. Christmas Day reverses the discipline. The meal of the twenty-fifth is a meal of meat and of rich first courses, taken at midday, and it is the table of the family gathered in full. Stuffed fresh pasta in broth, such as cappelletti or tortellini in brodo, belongs to the northern and central house, while roasts, boiled meats and capon or other fowl follow according to region. The order of courses keeps to the Italian sequence of antipasto, primo, secondo with its contorno, and then the sweet, but each is made larger and more deliberate than on an ordinary day. The sweet course of the season is where the regions part most clearly. Panettone of Milan, pandoro of Verona, panforte of Siena and the honeyed fried sweets of the south each mark a different tradition, and Time-Life — The Cooking of Italy gives them their place as the proper close of the festive table. They are made in quantity, kept in the house through the days of the feast, and offered to every visitor, so that the sweet table extends beyond the single meal into the whole season. What unites these customs is the sense of the table as the centre of the feast. The fast of the eve and the plenty of the day are two halves of one observance, and the cook is judged by the order and generosity of both. The dishes differ from valley to coast, yet the structure holds across Italy: abstinence, then the gathered family, then the sweet shared and kept.

The flavour of the Vigilia is that of the sea and the pantry: the salt of baccalà, the sweetness of fried vegetables, the plainness of fish dressed with oil and lemon. The table of the day itself turns to the savour of broth, roasted fowl and meat, and closes with the candied fruit, honey, spice and butter of the Christmas sweets.