Why This Site Exists

"I built this site because after my grandfather died I realized I didn't know why we did half the things we did. The traditions were everywhere in that house. I just never thought to ask."

My name is Marco Ricci. I grew up in Montreal in a Calabrian-Canadian household where the traditions were everywhere — in the kitchen, in the calendar, in the specific way certain days of the year had a weight that no one ever fully explained but everyone understood.

I remember tomato day. Late summer, the whole family assembled, cases of tomatoes going through the mill, jars filling up on every surface, the smell of it filling the house for days. Nobody sat me down and told me this was important. It just was. You could feel it in how seriously everyone took their role, in the specific silence that settled over the work, in the way my grandfather moved through that kitchen like he had been doing it for a hundred years — because in a sense, he had.

When he died, I realized how much I had taken for granted. I work in science and engineering. I think in systems and evidence. But after he was gone, I kept finding myself trying to reconstruct things I had half-learned, half-absorbed, and never quite written down. The reason we did certain things at Christmas. What the feast days actually meant. Why specific foods belonged to specific days. What the old sayings were really saying. Why the traditions that seemed like habit were actually carrying something much older and much more deliberate than habit.

I started Italian Family Traditions because I needed to understand what I had grown up inside — and because I suspected I was not the only one who had lost touch with what their ancestors were trying to teach them. This site is for the Italian-Canadian and Italian-American descendants who want more than nostalgia. It is for people who want to understand what these traditions actually were, where they came from, what they meant in family life, how they changed after immigration, and how to keep them alive for the next generation in a way that feels real rather than performative.

The research is careful. The writing is personal. And the goal is simple: to make sure that what our grandparents carried across the ocean does not disappear in the generation that forgot to ask.

— Marco Ricci
Founder, Italian Family Traditions
Montreal

Marco Ricci is an Italian-Canadian writer and the grandson of Calabrian immigrants. He created Italian Family Traditions to document the customs, feast days, and folk traditions Italian families carried from Italy to North America — and to understand what they actually meant. He is based in Montreal.

What You Will Find Here

Every post on this site is built from three things: personal family memory, careful research into the historical and cultural roots of each tradition, and the specific experience of growing up Italian-Canadian in Montreal. That combination — the personal, the researched, and the diasporic — is what makes this site different from a general Italian culture blog.

• The feast days, saints' days, and seasonal customs that shaped the Italian family calendar
• The table traditions, food rituals, and kitchen customs that carried culture from one generation to the next
• The folk beliefs, superstitions, and protective charms Italian families brought with them
• The immigration story — what changed when families left Italy, and what they refused to let go
• How to keep these traditions alive today in Italian-Canadian and Italian-American families

Start Reading

Some of the most-read posts on the site:

• What Is Malocchio? The Italian Evil Eye Tradition Explained
• What Is Fare la Scarpetta? The Italian Table Habit Many Families Still Remember
• What Is Acqua di San Giovanni? The Summer Tradition Italian Families Brought With Them
• Festa dei Morti in Sicily: Why Children Wake Up to Gifts and Sweets
• What Is Onomastico? Why Italians Celebrate Name Days

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