Culture
The townspeople observe many feast days, celebrating in traditional style with parades, religious processions, and fireworks. The most elaborate celebration is for the feast of Saint George, the patron saint of the town. It is celebrated on 23 April. Others include the feast of Saint Joseph (19 March), Saint Anthony (June 13), Ferragosto (15 August), and Epiphany (early January) as well as Christmas and Easter. Many inhabitants still make their own wine; preserve tomatoes; make olive oil, and slaughter a pig shortly after Christmas (ritualistically imitating centuries of forebears who did the same to provide meat throughout the coming year).
Emigrants from this town are scattered throughout the world. From about 1880 to 1925 many settled in New York, Philadelphia and Cleveland. After World War II emigration to Canada, Switzerland, and South America was more common. The most common names in this town include D'Alessio, Baranello, Caruso,Timperio,Centritto, Di Biase, Fierro, Di Giglio, Di Lella, Di Camillo, Iademarco and Fantacone. Based on an unpublished ethnographic study, several surnames are highly distinctive to this town; such that if encountered anywhere in the world, could likely be traced back to Mirabello: Centritto, Fantacone, Iademarco, Iafigliola, Margiasso, Spicciati, Sulmona, and Volpacchio. Other names have historic origins in the town but are extinct in the town today: Di Giovanni and Perrotta. Of the surnames not mentioned, other common names include: Caiella, Damiano, D'Imperio, DiSisto, Di Vico, Fierro, Gugliemi, Anetti, Lazzaro, Lembo, Piacente, Marino, Rocco, Tucci, Spina, Stanziani, Verdone, Zappone, and Zingaro; but are relatively common in other places in Italy.
Read more about this topic: Mirabello Sannitico
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The white dominant culture seemed to think that once the Indians were off the reservations, they’d eventually become like everybody else. But they aren’t like everybody else. When the Indianness is drummed out of them, they are turned into hopeless drunks on skid row.”
—Elizabeth Morris (b. c. 1933)
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Nobody seriously questions the principle that it is the function of mass culture to maintain public morale, and certainly nobody in the mass audience objects to having his morale maintained.”
—Robert Warshow (1917–1955)