Juicy Post: An Anglo-Italian Christmas Mashup

Christmas Cultural Differences

This Christmas we had one foot in Italy and the other in England, while wearing many decades of an American Christmassy experience at the same time. This made for a diverse week of holiday meal traditions. Contrary to the Italian immigrant custom in the US – the Feast of Seven Fishes – on Christmas Eve, an Italian family will have fish (but not seven). Christmas day in Bologna requires tortellini in brodo. For Christmas lunch, my Italy Insider daughter holds sway and shows Italians how a real beef roast is done, either with scalloped potatoes or the popover’s English cousin – Yorkshire pudding.  She varies the roast from year to year. This one, a boneless rib roast wrapped in pancetta (the butcher was aghast but game to comply and requested  a photo of how it turned out). Fresh spinach from a local farmer was our festive green, and then the Italian custom of slicing Panettone, Offella and Pandoro paired with fresh clementines must always be the closer.  Our current favorite by far is the one produced by Sebastiano Caridi, which unfortunately is not available in the US.

In the UK, turkey is traditional on Christmas day, since the British are denied the November Pilgrim vibe.  My daughter, when she is not painting portraits, revels in British Christmas traditions – she makes individual mince pies and has dabbled in plum puddings but  has settled on the Christmas Cake from Ottolenghi’s Sweet Cookbook as her  holiday tradition – she gives out small loaf versions to friends, but covers the family one with a layer of marzipan and then royal icing. My son-in-law made exquisite marzipan fruits -perhaps inspired by what he saw in Sicily.  I had my doubts about this British gilding of the lily, but her version is really a great treat. 

This year she added Mary Berry’s Chocolate Roulade to the roster of holiday desserts. You definitely should make it, as it is so simple, so light and so delicious. The recipe below is quite straightforward and is without flour! Mary Berry, who will be 90 this year, is still active in the British culinary world and ever-present on cooking shows. I find it  astounding that she has published over seventy cookbooks. She overcame polio as an adolescent and suffered the loss of a teenage son in a car accident. She and her husband (who is 91) currently play croquet together for exercise – a sport that despite its French-sounding name was invented in Ireland and then adopted widely in England in the mid-nineteenth century.

What Is A Panto?

At our request, this year  we were treated to another unique British and non-edible custom – the Christmas Panto. With all the British theater we have sampled, I had never heard of this tradition.  Almost any urban center with a theater produces a Panto every year. In fact, there are about 300 theaters throughout the UK that produce one from November through January. Some are put on by amateur theater groups with little financial backing, while others have lavish budgets, like the one we saw this year in Portsmouth – Dick Whittington. It is customary to have a glass of “Champers” before the Panto and even enjoy a generous cup of ice cream in your seat during halftime.  Many bring their own food to eat during the play.You are surrounded by children, grandparents, parents and teens, all having a boisterously good time. The framework is usually a fairy tale but with modern humor – some of it mildly risqué and with local references that delight those in the know. 

Among the iron-clad requirements is audience participation, with shouting back stock lines such as “He’s behind you” and “Oh no you didn’t.”  Sweets and toilet paper can be thrown, and audience members are likely to be dragged up to the stage. There’s always a Principal Boy, often played by a girl; a hilarious drag queen who basically hijacks the play; an animal such as a horse or, in our case, Dick Whittington’s mythical cat. Often the Twelve Days Of Christmas carol is given quite a twist in both lyrics and antics, and the plays all have a cast of stock characters who have their roots in the Italian Commedia dell’Arte. 

Panto’s Italian Roots

 Panto’s (short for Pantomime, which means all types of mime) origins may derive from Roman role-reversal festivities, when the wealthy allowed their slave or servant staff to play master for the day, most likely during Saturnalia, a raucous Roman holiday in the third week of December. But the street theater traditions of Commedia dell’Arte inform the British Panto.  Its characters are not too far removed from Arlechino, Colombina, Pantalone, Dottore,  Pucinella (the forebear of Punch and Judy) and of course the Innamorati who, after suffering obstacles,  finally live happily ever after. They are helped by crafty zanni – servant characters – who employ  all sorts of tricks to bring the  Innamorati together – it is where we get our word zany. Whereas highbrow theater with its aristocratic audience and formal venues relied on set theatrical pieces, the dialogues of Commedia dell’Arte  were improvisational – these stock characters and the actors and acrobats who played them always had certain unchanging characteristics, which audiences could identify with no matter where they played.

Commedia dell’Arte troupes from Northern Italy  and Naples established  this unique form of street theater. From the 16th through the 18th century these troupes played in town squares and later in courts of European principalities, the British Isles and even as far as Moscow. Today in museums you can view paintings by Watteau, Manet, Degas and Picasso (just to name some) all depicting the actors of this particular art form. I even saw an incredible Diaghilev ballet recreated by George Balanchine with a score composed by Igor Stravinsky based on the Neopolitan Commedia dell’ Arte characters titled Pulcinella.

Isn’t it fascinating to understand how a recipe or art form that might be considered particular to a certain country really has its roots in another. I think of zuppa inglese in Italy, which is the almost unrecognizable adaptation of an English trifle. Or our own mashup of Christmas carols from other countries. Here in Bologna, the song I hear the most is Brenda Lee’s version of  Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree. That this unique British theatrical tradition has its roots in Italian theater makes serving Yorkshire Pudding at Christmas in Bologna seem like coming full circle. 

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