photo courtesy www.thedishmadison.com
We've made it to Day 12 (dodici)!!!! We're half way to Christmas already!
I must admit, I'm jumping the gun a tiny little bit with my choice for today. I intended to wait until closer to New Year's Eve with this one, seeing as it is a New Year's Eve Italian tradition- but...
as soon as I saw a vendor at the mercatino the other day with an enormous bin of red underwear for sale, I could not resist.
All over Italy, everyone wears red underwear (mutande) on New Year's Eve (notte di San Silvestro or vigilia di capodanno) for good luck. There is no rule that it has to be new red underwear, but just in case you needed some, shops start advertising and selling red underwear early in December. Thus, the bin of red mutande! Everyone, and I mean everyone, believes in the red underwear tradition. Babies, toddlers, moms, dads, even the 95 year olds will all be sporting red underwear. You can't take any chances when good luck is involved, so you might just as well give it all you've got.
I had to rummage around in this bin for a while. I just could not help myself. Every size and shape underwear you can imagine was in that bin. Everything from itty-bitty thongs to big granny pants. And people were buying.
There doesn't seem to be any requirement that you be Italian to do the wearing of the red underwear for good luck. So, I'm sharing the tradition with all of you. Why not tuck a little bit of red into the Christmas stockings of all your family members this year? Who is with me on this?
Buon Natale!
