Buon Natale a tutti!

Usually you buy an artificial tree (not usually taller than 170 centimetres) to place in your home and decorate it in various ways: we pay particular attention to the Christmas baubles, which are balls of various sizes and colors and are often combined with garlands, even they are colored and of various lengths, colored lights to attach and various decorations as desired.
An important part of the tree certainly covers the tip: on the tip of the tree we often place a decoration, called a tip, which may perhaps be a star, a bow, a colored tip or something else.

Some families also decorate their homes with garlands, colored fairy lights and other decorations. Even in the city the Christmas atmosphere is felt: dazzling, decorative lights are hung in the streets and sometimes positioned to take on certain shapes, for example stars.
For us, Christmas can also be summed up in three colours: red, green and white, so very often we carpet the house and the streets with decorations of these two colours.

The protagonist of the entire holiday season is certainly mistletoe. Mistletoe is a shrub that grows in the woods of Europe, it has a bushy shape with branches and flowers gathered in bands and berries, filled with viscous liquid; its name comes from this characteristic. It is used a lot as a Christmas decoration to decorate doors, chandeliers and more and is a sign of good omen. One of the most beautiful traditions is certainly linked to the "kiss under the mistletoe": lovers must exchange a kiss under this plant and should be able to chase away the couple's problems or at least they should be able to resolve them. Thousands of couples kiss under this shrub by tradition.

BABBO NATALE (Santa Claus)
Santa Claus or Babbo Natale in italian Is an old and fat man with a bunch of love and he wears in color Red. During the night of the 24th December he comes in your house and leaves a bunch of presents, usually under the Christmas tree.

CHRISTMAS TREE In the houses before Christmas you can find a Christmas tree with lot of colored balls and lights.

CRECHE
During the Christmas night or the Christmas day a lot of people go the church for the Christmas service. In a lot of Cristian families usually you can find a creche or the "nativity" representation with Mary, Joseph and the child inside the manger.

THE ADVENT CALENDAR
The advent calendar starts on December 1st and every day until Christmas (December 25th) boxes open, where you can find fantastic surprises.

CHRISTMAS LUNCH
Christmas lunch Is very important for the family because all the family eats and talk together. On Christmas Eve we cook delicious biscuits for the family and also for Santa Claus who eats them when he comes during the night. In particular, in Siena, there are many sweets we would like to talk about. We are going to describe a typical Christmas’ menu and one recipe of a Christmas dessert… we are so excited to show you our traditions!!! In a classic Christmas lunch in Italy we eat Tortellini soup and Ragù Lasagne for first course, Stewed wild boar with roast potatoes for second course. The most important course of a classical Italian Christmas lunch is the dessert. In fact, we usually eat pandoro, panettone and cavallucci with vin santo, which we are going to talk about after. At the end, a good cafe and roast chetsnuts!! Non we're going to see the recepe of cavallucci!

CAVALLUCCI
Ingredients (for 12 pieces) 300g 00 flour 250 g Sugar 100g of walnut 70g Candied orange 50g Honey 8 Anise seeds Cinnamon powder Bicarbonate Procedure Mix in a bowl flour, anise seeds, cinnamon, bicarbonate and walnuts. Melt sugar in a pot with honey and 50 g of water; cook it until it is completely melted. After that, put the melted sugar in the bowl with flour, mix everything and make twelve balls. Cook it for twelve minutes. Enjoy it!