When it comes to Christmas in an Italian American household, there is one word you need to keep in mind: Food! Everything revolves around what to eat! Now usually American families would think about what to prepare maybe a few days before or they directly made reservations at a nice restaurant. Now in an Italian American family, that is unthinkable.

The Christmas menu starts to be discussed around the same time the Thanksgiving menu is discussed so that means around the middle of September, actually the exact questions would be: Socco amu accucinari pi crismisi? which means “What are we cooking for Christmas?’”… and that is where it all begins! They start asking all the kids what do you want to eat? Nobody knows in mid-September what they want to eat on the 25^th of December.