On Sunday, August 15, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., as part of the Terza Domenica Heritage Series, the Garibaldi-Meucci Museum will celebrate the Italian summer festivalFerragosto. In keeping with this popular Italian holiday, we will offer games, crafts and activities for the whole family. Museum staff will teach visitors bocce and theTarantella, and give free tours of the museum—in English and Italian. Admission is free, and there will be delicious food from various regions of Italy available for sale, as well as a selection of Italian wines for the adults to taste. Le Nozze di Carlo will be performing Italian folk and pop music, we’ll have some awesome raffles, and will offerface painting by Melissa of FaceArtByMelissa.com for the kids, and kids at heart. Parking will be available at the Church of St. Joseph, 137 St. Mary’s Avenue at Tompkins Avenue.
Ferragosto began as Feriae Augusti (Latin for “Festivals of the Emperor Augustus”). In 18 BC, Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus renamed the sixth month of the Roman calendar from Sextilis to Augustus after himself, and declared that the month would be dedicated to a series of festivals and celebrations to mark the end of the summeragricultural cycle.
The most important of these celebrations was dedicated to Diana, the Goddess whose task it was to oversee the woods, the phases of the moon, fertility and maternity. These celebrations were one of the few occasions in which Romans from all walks of life—masters and slaves alike—mingled freely, eating and drinking with great abandon. During this time women also offered prayers to the goddess for protection during childbirth. The Feriae Augusti celebrated other gods as well: Vortumnus, God of the Seasons and the ripening of crops; Conso, the God of the Harvest; and Opeconsiva, who personified the abundant harvest.
While the Feriae were a celebration of fertility and maternity, with the advent of Christianity people turned to the Virgin Mary for help in these matters. But the Feriae festivities were so deeply rooted that, rather than trying to eradicate them, the Roman Catholic Church added to them a Christian focus. By the sixth century AD the 15th of August had become a Holy Day of Obligation to commemorate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary—the physical elevation of her sinless soul and incorrupt body into Heaven. These celebrations began in the church in Jerusalem that was said to be Her resting place and spread through the rest of the Empire under Mauritius in the late 500s AD. The modern dogma that she was transported to Heaven on Ferragosto took hold in the 18th century, and was only formally proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in 1950.
Today Ferragosto is the peak of the summer holiday season in Italy, when most Italians take brief vacations and many Italians take the entire month as a holiday in honor of this feast day. It is a time for picnics and playing at the beach.
We will be celebrating this Italian summer holiday on our great lawn, so come, eat, drink and be merry in the traditional Italian way. It’s a great way for the whole family to spend a summer afternoon together.
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