Where, when to see the New Orleans Italian-American St. Joseph's Parade
The St. Joseph's Society will celebrate St. Joseph's day with a parade through the French Quarter. The parade starts at 6 p.m. at the Canal and Chartres, then winds it's way through the French Quarter on Saturday, March 19. This year's parade features 16 floats, nine marching bands and plenty of marchers in tuxedos! The parade returns this year af...
A guide to the St. Joseph’s Day altars
Saturday, March 19, is the Feast Day of St. Joseph, and the lavish altars celebrating the day are truly a feast for the eyes. The altars offered as thanks for relieving hunger are overflowing with food: fish, pasta, pastries, breads in symbolic shapes. You won’t find any meat; St. Joseph’s Day always falls during Lent. The altars are also laden wit...
Metairie's Irish-Italian parade Sunday to shower Vets crowds with veggies, snacks, trinkets
The Louisiana Irish-Italian parade will be back on Veterans Memorial Boulevard on Sunday (March 20) celebrating the organization's 40th year as well as its return from a three-year hiatus. The giant procession sets out at noon from Veterans and Houma boulevards with 31 floats, 58 truck floats, 15 walking clubs and a flag-throwing group from Italy,...
St. Joseph's Altar recipes passed down in baker's family carry on a sacred tradition
Sandra Scalise Juneau has lived St. Joseph's Altars all her life. At age 5 in 1945, she portrayed the Virgin Mary in the "tupa tupa" ceremony, representing the Holy Family knocking on the door, at her Nonna Accardo’s dining room altar. She learned from her two Sicilian grandmothers how to prepare and bake the special foods, and she has passed that...
Mother-daughter duo reigns over Sicilian Fest
For the first time in the festival’s 14 years, a mother-daughter duo was chosen to reign over the Independence Sicilian Heritage Festival this weekend. Brenda Liuzza, the festival’s madre, and her daughter and festival queen, 21-year-old Faith Liuzza, said they’ve been involved in the celebration all their lives, and the opportunity to serve on the...
The St Joseph’s Day Parade of the Italian American St Joseph Society in NOLA is BACK!
The St Joseph’s Day Parade is BACK! March 19, 2022. It's FREE. For more info visit: www.iasjs.org Honoring the end of a famine in Sicily by prayers to St. Joseph. The 50th Annual St Joseph's Day Parade presented by the Italian American St Joseph's Society and its Post-Parade Gala, are the premier Italian-American events held post-Mardi Gras in the...
St. Joseph's altar returns to Immaculate Conception church in Denham Springs
Preparations are underway for the return of the traditional St. Joseph’s Altar at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Denham Springs that will once again be open to the public after two years of interruptions brought on by concerns about the spread of the coronavirus. Members of the Friends of St. Joseph organization have already started bakin...
How Sicilian Merchants in New Orleans Reinvented America's Diet
When I started writing a book exploring the crucial contributions that Sicilians had made to New Orleans food culture, I sat down to talk with fabled restaurateur Salvatore “Joe” Segreto. “You’re not going to do one of those “who killa da chief?” histories, are you?,” was the first question he asked me. Segreto referred to a familiar catcall heard...
Italian Heritage Events at Beauregard-Keyes House, March 13, 16-18
The Beauregard-Keyes Historic House & Garden, home to the Corrado Giacona Family from 1904-1925, will again honor the Patron Saint of Sicily with its annual St. Joseph’s altar March 16-18. The public is welcome to join staff and volunteers in marking this sacred Sicilian tradition, which has been celebrated in the French Quarter since Sicilian immi...
‘We have a proud tradition’: After 100 years, Crewe of Columbus to celebrate its Mobile Mardi Gras roots
When Neil Diamond’s “America” cues up inside the Mobile Civic Center, and the Crewe of Columbus marches out Friday for their 100th anniversary tableau, Terry Ankerson will be dancing right along with them. It’s a fellowship the 75-year-old retired banker from Mobile has been involved with since 1974. His family has been linked to the mystic society...
Italians in the Delta: "Pioneers of Monroe"
The Italians in Monroe, Louisiana, are a small, tight-knit group of successful, family-oriented people who have established deep roots in the Delta while maintaining a connection to each other and to their home country, despite pressures to become mainstream Americans. Even though Italians were the largest immigrant population of turn of the 19th c...
Oro Macht Frei (Gold Will Set You Free)
Each year on January 27, the United Nations remembers the many people of Jewish origin affected by the Holocaust and this day is officially called the "International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust" (Il Giorno della Memoria). To remember the victims of the Holocaust, on Thursday, January 27, 2022 the ICCC in collabora...