The Sacred Pig. Ritual food-sharing on the feast of Saint Anthony in Celano, Italy

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the ethnographic case study of a festival revival observed in Celano, a hill town in Abruzzo (Italy). On 17 January, in accordance with the Catholic calendar, the community celebrates the feast of Saint Anthony the Abbot. In the folkloric iconography, the Saint is strongly connected with animals, specifically the pig, which is even represented with him in the sacred effigy. While in the past a more complex ritual was performed, what is central nowadays in the ‘re-invented’ tradition is the food sharing involving the whole community. On the feast night, a huge fire is set on the central square, and people flock around it, eat roasted pork sausages and drink wine. In the article, I discuss how the current ritual pork-sharing is emically maintained as a tradition to preserve the community’s identity, and how this enacts and reshapes the global–local dynamic.

RIASSUNTO

L’articolo si basa sullo studio etnografico di una festa che si tiene ogni anno a Celano, un paese pedemontano abruzzese: il 17 gennaio, secondo il calendario cattolico, la comunità festeggia Sant’Antonio Abate. Nell’iconografia folklorica, il Santo è strettamente connesso con gli animali, specialmente con il maiale, che infatti è persino rappresentato con lui nelle sacre effigi. Se in passato un rito più complesso e articolato caratterizzava questa festa, oggi quello che è centrale nella tradizione ‘re-inventata’ è la condivisione del cibo che coinvolge tutta la comunità. La sera della festa, un grande falò è acceso in piazza e i celanesi si radunano intorno ad esso, mangiano salsicce arrosto e bevono vino. Nell’articolo si ragiona su come la condivisione di carne di maiale sia emicamente ancora considerata una tradizione che mantiene l’identità della comunità, e come essa abbia metabolizzato la dinamica globale-locale.

KEYWORDS:

• Saint Anthony the Abbot
• ritual
• food
• folklore
• tradition
• global–local

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• Sant'Antonio Abate; rito; cibo; folklore; tradizione; globale-locale

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Giovanni Kezich, anthropologist and director of the ‘Museo degli Usi e Costumi della Gente Trentina’ (San Michele all’Adige, TN – Italy), for allowing me to read his stimulating fieldnotes on 2016 Saint Anthony’s feast in Collelongo and Villavallelonga (AQ – Italy).

I also express my gratitude to Prof. Nir Avieli for welcoming me to the ‘Ben Gurion’ University of the Negev, in Be’er Sheva (Israel). His extraordinarily competent and friendly supervision led me to discover the anthropology of food, and thus to elaborate the ideas formulated in this article.

Lastly I would like to specially thank Mr. Ezio Ciciotti for providing me with Saint Anthony’s holy card image, my friend Cesare Paris for his help and his invaluable work in disseminating local cultural heritage, and the whole of Celano’s townsfolk.

Notes

1. *All names have been changed to protect informants’ privacy.

2. ‘Concertare’ is the traditional verb he uses, meaning both ‘to organize’ the group, and ‘to rehearse’ the music and the songs.

3. From his blog https://www.diegofusaro.com/contro-halloween-festa-mondialista/and during a 2017 conference, available on his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzO3qOhLBcE.

4. He wrote an article on the blog of Feltrinelli, one of the most relevant publishers in Italy: http://www.feltrinellieditore.it/news/2007/10/30/umberto-galimberti-halloween–quel-mondo-pagano-finito-nel-cristianesimo-9172/.

5. See, for example, the news reported on il Giornale: http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/politica/meno-zucche-pi-santi-chiesa-organizza-contro-halloween-1458260.html.

6. Literally ‘zucchini-eaters’; the ironic parochial nickname indicates people from Avezzano, the city that lately has stolen Celano’s economic and political prominence in Marsica.

7. See, for example, this article on Il fatto quotidiano: https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2017/12/17/natale-presepi-che-spariscono-nelle-scuole-e-canzoni-senza-gesu-si-fomenta-intolleranza-no-una-festa-per-tutti/4043370/.

8. It has to be noted that in Italian the word ‘maiale” means both ‘pig’ and ‘pork’, the animal and the meat, without any distinction.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francesco Della Costa

Francesco Della Costa is an anthropologist currently affiliated at the Center for Israel Studies of the LMU of Munich (Germany). After his PhD (University of Naples ‘l’Orientale’/École des hautes études en sciences sociales of Paris), he started working as a researcher in Israel, at the Romance Studies department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2013-15), and at the Sociology and Anthropology department of Ben Gurion University, Be’er Sheva (2016–18), where the present work was carried out. His current research interests range from sacred and ritual to writing and literature, to food.