In Catholicism, the Cult of the Dead is very important. Who isn’t familiar, especially in America, with the traditional Mexican celebrations for El Dia de los Muertos? In Italy, too, religious events and spiritual moments of remembrance hold hands with more prosaic examples of the country’s attachment to her faithful departed.

Among them, we also find food, especially cookies and cakes, often made especially for our loved ones from heaven, who are said to come to visit us in the night between the 1st and the 2nd of November. It wasn’t unusual, in the good old days, to leave a plate of these simple, wholesome treats on the table for them before going to bed, just like children of today leave cookies, milk and a carrot for Santa and Rudolph on Christmas Eve.