Italian Family Traditions

How to Play Tombola, the Italian Christmas Game (Printable Cards and Smorfia Caller)

Dinner is over. Dessert is half-finished. Coffee is out. Somebody says “should we do tombola?” and within five minutes the whole room is louder, funnier, and considerably more competitive than it needs to be. That is the whole point.

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Tombola is the Italian Christmas game: a caller draws numbers from 1 to 90, players cover them on cards of 15 numbers with dried beans, and prizes go to the first ambo (two numbers on a row), terno, quaterna, cinquina (a full row), and finally tombola (the whole card). Every number has a nickname from the Neapolitan smorfia, and calling them is half the fun. If you don’t have a set, you can play right here: the free caller below draws the numbers with their smorfia names, and the card maker prints six free cartelle so you can start tonight.

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Play tombola tonight: the smorfia caller and printable cards

No set in the house? You don’t need one. The caller below draws numbers from 1 to 90, announces each one with its smorfia name in Neapolitan and English, lights up the board, and keeps track of the prizes as they are claimed. Turn on the voice and your phone will call the numbers in Italian; leave the dramatic pause on for suspense. Then switch to the second tab to print six free cards, real Italian cartelle on a single page, and you are playing.

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My nonna, the caller

My nonna called the numbers. This was not a role formally assigned to her — it was simply understood, in the way that many things were understood in an Italian family household, that certain jobs belonged to certain people and the only way you discovered this was by trying to do the job yourself and seeing what happened. What happened if you tried to call the tombola numbers was that my nonna would listen for approximately thirty seconds and then begin correcting your technique. So she called the numbers. She had been calling them since before any of us were born. She is Calabrese, not Neapolitan, and she still knew every number’s smorfia nickname. She had opinions about the correct dramatic pause between the draw and the announcement. She treated the role with the seriousness of someone who understood that the caller is not just a reader of numbers but the manager of the room’s entire emotional state for however long the game lasts.

In my family, tombola came after the fish. Christmas Eve was the Vigilia — baccalà, calamari, shrimp, clams, smelts — and when the plates were cleared, the games began. Simple ones first: rolling hazelnuts off a serving spoon to try to touch another nut, guessing how many nuts were hidden in someone’s closed hand. And then tombola, in the years we were lucky enough to have a set, with my nonna at the basket and everyone else at her mercy. Last year my oldest son, six years old, played his first game. The tradition had found its next player.

Tombola is not really about winning. It is about the reason to stay at the table after dinner, the noise that signals the evening is not over yet, and the specific atmosphere that only this game, in this house, with these people, produces.

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What tombola is and how it works

Tombola is a traditional Italian number-drawing game especially associated with Christmas. As Treccani describes, a caller draws numbers from 1 to 90 and players mark those numbers on their cards as they are called. The wins build in sequence — each one a milestone on the way to the complete card, each one earning a prize from the shared pot.

A standard card, or cartella, has three rows and nine columns: fifteen numbers, five on each row, with the first column holding 1 to 9, the second 10 to 19, and so on up to 80 to 90. Each number on the tombola board carries a Neapolitan meaning through la smorfia — the dream book that turned sleep into numbers.

Win	What it means	The feeling in the room
Ambo	Two numbers covered on the same row of your card	Mild interest. The game is warming up. Nobody is concerned yet.
Terno	Three numbers on the same row	The room becomes more attentive. Some cards are tracking better than others.
Quaterna	Four numbers on the same row	Definite attention. Someone is getting close to cinquina. The caller feels the energy shift.
Cinquina	A complete row of five numbers	The shout. The neighbors may have heard. Someone claims they were one number away. They are always one number away.
Tombola	The entire card — all 15 numbers	Celebration or immediate suspicion, depending on who won and whether anyone liked them already.

If you are wondering whether it is similar to bingo, the answer is yes — in the same way that a Sunday family dinner is similar to eating. The basic mechanics overlap. The experience is completely different. Bingo is a game. Tombola is a Christmas occasion, a family ritual, a comedy performance, and a competitive sport all occurring simultaneously at the same table. Italy Magazine notes that tombola is especially popular during the Christmas holidays because the whole family can play together — and that older versions were often played with simple markers like dried beans or orange peel, things you had in the house at Christmas, which is exactly the point.

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The prizes — what goes in the pot and how it works

Before the game begins, every player contributes something to the pot — typically a small fixed amount per card purchased. The pot is then divided across the milestones. A common structure: ambo takes a small share, terno a little more, quaterna more still, cinquina a meaningful portion, and tombola — the full card — takes the largest prize of all. Establish the split before you start. Mid-game disputes about the pot are the wrong kind of noise.

The prizes themselves are rarely large in monetary terms. A few dollars. A box of chocolates. A panettone. A caciocavallo. A bottle of something. Clementines. Scratch tickets. Whatever the family assembled for the occasion. What matters is the disproportion between the value of what was won and the celebration of winning it — a disproportion that is universally understood as part of the game and universally enjoyed by everyone except occasionally the person in second place.

In our family the prize for the full tombola was a bag rather than cash — assembled earlier in the day, and nobody had looked inside, which meant it contained surprises. One year it held a whole caciocavallo, a bottle of wine, a pair of socks, and a scratch ticket. My uncle won it. He examined each item with the serious assessment of someone receiving a state honour. He kept the cheese and the wine. He gave the socks to my cousin. He scratched the ticket at the table with the ceremony it deserved, and whatever it won went into next year’s pot. Nobody objected. This felt correct.

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Where tombola comes from

The tradition is strongly tied to Naples. The origin story most commonly repeated connects tombola to 1734 and the reign of Charles of Bourbon in the Kingdom of Naples. As Visit Naples explains, a dispute arose between Charles and the Church over the public lotto game during the Christmas period. The compromise pushed the game into the domestic space of the home, specifically during the Christmas holidays. What had been a public institution became a family one.

Whether the story is historically precise in every detail or not, it captures something true. Tombola is a domestic game — always meant for the table, for the hour after dinner, for the moment when nobody has anywhere to be and someone needs a reason to keep everyone in the same room a little longer. Once something gets attached to Christmas in an Italian family, good luck getting rid of it.

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The smorfia — why the numbers have nicknames

Naples also gave tombola the smorfia: the ancient system that assigns each number from 1 to 90 a specific symbolic meaning, figure, or situation drawn from Neapolitan folk culture. Visit Naples directly ties tombola to the 90 numbers of the smorfia. The caller who knows the smorfia does not just announce a number — they announce its identity. And the room responds to the identity rather than the digit.

Here are the most famous smorfia numbers and what happens when they are called:

Number	Smorfia name	Meaning	What happens when it’s called
1	L’Italia	Italy itself	Mild patriotic warmth. Someone says “finalmente.”
8	‘A Madonna	The Madonna	The holiest number in the first ten. Someone crosses themselves before covering it.
13	Sant’Antonio	Saint Anthony	The devout nod. The less devout also nod, out of respect.
17	‘A disgrazia	Misfortune	Italy’s unlucky number. A groan goes around the table, and nobody wants it on their card.
22	‘O pazzo	The madman	The caller looks at someone specific. The room laughs. That person also laughs, eventually.
25	‘O Natale	Christmas	The most cheered number of the night, for obvious reasons.
32	‘O capitone	The eel	The Christmas Eve eel of Naples. Somebody at the table is still digesting it.
33	L’anne ‘e Cristo	The years of Christ	Announced with weight. The religious members of the table feel this one.
47	‘O muorto	The dead man	A pause. Someone makes the sign of the cross. Someone else laughs. Both reactions are correct.
48	‘O muorto che parla	The dead man who speaks	More unsettling than 47. Someone always says they dreamed this number.
69	Sottosopra	Upside down	It reads the same turned over. Someone applies it to the state of the game.
77	‘E diavule	The devils	Many families call it women’s legs instead, for the shape of the sevens. Announced by a certain kind of caller with a certain kind of pause.
90	‘A paura	Fear	The last number on the board. Announced with ceremony. The room feels it.

Families with Neapolitan roots often preserve partial or full knowledge of these nicknames — and, as my own Calabrese nonna proves, so do plenty of families from elsewhere in the south. The full list of all ninety, in Neapolitan, Italian, and English, is in our guide to la smorfia napoletana, and the caller above uses the same names. Even partial use of the smorfia — five or six numbers called with their nicknames rather than their digits — immediately transforms the game from a number exercise into something that sounds like itself.

My nonna knew the smorfia the way she knew the words to prayers — automatically, without looking anything up, as part of a system she had absorbed so early it felt like a natural language rather than learned knowledge. When she drew a number she announced it in Italian and in dialect, gave the smorfia name, and sometimes added a comment that bore on the name’s meaning in the context of whoever was playing. Number 22 — ‘o pazzo — the madman. She would look straight at her brother, my great-uncle, when she said it. He pretended not to notice. The room noticed. That is what the smorfia adds to tombola. It gives the caller material, and it gives the room something to respond to. The numbers stop being numbers. They become characters.

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What calling the numbers actually sounds like

The caller’s role in tombola is not administrative. It is performative. A good caller understands that the room is in their hands for the duration of the game and manages it accordingly — with timing, with personality, with the specific theatrical instinct that makes tombola feel like an event rather than a procedure.

A mediocre caller draws a number, reads it flatly, and moves on. The game happens. Nobody particularly remembers it.

A good caller draws a number and holds it for a moment without speaking. The room notices the pause. Then the caller announces the smorfia name first — “O pazzo” — and lets it land before giving the digit. “Ventidue.” The room has already responded. The person the caller looked at while saying “o pazzo” is already deciding how to react. The number itself almost comes second.

The best callers also comment on the state of play — noting who is close, expressing theatrical sympathy for the perpetually unlucky, questioning aloud whether certain players are paying proper attention. They make the game feel observed. That sense of being inside a shared performance, rather than simply sitting at a table with cards, is what separates a memorable tombola game from a forgettable one. The cards and the numbers are the same either way. The caller is the variable that matters most.

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The people who make tombola what it is

Every family tombola has its recurring cast. The faces change by household but the types are remarkably consistent across generations and geographies.

The type	What they do
The dramatic caller	Treats every number as an occasion. Pauses for effect. Has been told to just say the number and refuses. The game is significantly better for this.
The suspicious one	Convinced the caller is helping a specific player. Cannot prove this. Will bring it up again next Christmas.
The always-one-away	Every game. Every single game. One number away from cinquina. The number never comes. Reported as a tragedy each time with the same level of surprise.
The child who wins	Celebrates with a completeness that adults have lost the ability to access. The adults find this either delightful or slightly irritating depending on how close they were.
The quiet elder	Marks their card with minimal fuss. Says nothing dramatic when they win. Simply collects. Wins more than anyone expects.
The two-card player	Said they could handle it. Cannot quite handle it. Keeps missing numbers on one card while protecting the other. Also a tragedy. Also every game.

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Tombola as a child’s first Italian tradition

For many Italian-Canadian and Italian-American descendants, tombola was the first Italian cultural experience that made complete sense to them as children. Before language. Before history. Before they understood what most of the traditions around them actually meant.

You did not need Italian to play tombola. You needed to hear numbers and mark a card. A child who could count could play. A child who could not yet count in Italian could still play, because the numbers came in both languages in most diaspora households. The eight-year-old and the eighty-year-old were genuinely in the same game, competing on genuinely equal terms, and the child knew it.

That equality matters more than it might seem. Most Italian traditions, observed from the outside, require knowledge to fully appreciate — the religious meaning of a feast day, the significance of a food, the story behind a custom. Tombola requires none of that. The child is immediately inside the tradition rather than watching it from the edges. They mark their card. They shout when they get ambo. They feel the tension of the room before a cinquina announcement. They learn, without being told, that Christmas in this family has a particular texture after dinner — loud, funny, and competitive in a way that everyone enjoys. For more on how children absorb Italian heritage through exactly this kind of participation, read how to get your kids interested in their Italian heritage.

My oldest son played his first tombola last year, at six. He did not know what ambo meant when he got it, and someone at the table explained. He did not know what terno meant either. By the time he was one number away from a cinquina, he understood perfectly — in the way that matters most, which is through wanting something specific to happen and feeling the whole room hold its breath with him. Nobody had to teach him what Christmas felt like at that table. The game did it for them.

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Tombola in Italian-Canadian and Italian-American families

Tombola crossed the ocean and adapted without losing much. Some Italian traditions needed specific ingredients, specific space, or a specific village rhythm that did not survive immigration intact. Tombola needed almost none of that. It needed people, cards, numbers from 1 to 90, and a table that nobody wanted to leave yet.

In Montreal’s Italian community — in the houses of Little Italy and later in Saint-Michel and Rivières-des-Prairies as families spread across the city — tombola was the game that came out after the Christmas Eve vigil or after the Capodanno lunch on January 1. The language at the table changed depending on the generation present — sometimes Italian, sometimes French, sometimes English, sometimes a Calabrian or Sicilian dialect nobody had formally been taught but everyone somehow understood. The prizes changed with the decades. The noise did not change.

Regional variations existed too. Families with Calabrian roots played with different calling habits than families with Neapolitan roots. The smorfia nicknames were not universal — different provinces had their own associations, and what number 33 meant in one family was not always what it meant in another. These differences could produce spirited disagreements when two branches of a family married and their respective tombola customs collided at the same table. These disagreements were also, in their own way, part of the tradition.

The tombola game I remember most clearly was not Christmas Eve but January 1 — Capodanno, after the lunch with the cold cuts and the lasagna and the cutlets, when everyone was full and nobody was leaving and someone produced the tombola set from the specific drawer where it lived year-round. We played for two hours. There were accusations. There were dramatic announcements of ambo that produced no recognition from the room whatsoever. There was one legitimate cinquina celebrated with more enthusiasm than the eventual tombola winner. The eventual tombola winner was my uncle, who said nothing, collected his prize, and asked if we were playing another round. We played another round. Nobody won in the second round but everyone stayed until the pot was empty and the numbers had been through twice. When I think about Capodanno in that house I think about the tombola set more than I think about the food, and the food was extraordinary.

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How to set up and run tombola for your family

Tombola requires almost nothing. Here is what you need and how to run it properly.

The numbers. You need 1 to 90, drawn one at a time from a bag or container — or use the free caller at the top of this page, which keeps track of every number for you. These can be purchased as a set, printed and cut, or written on slips of paper. A small cloth bag is traditional. A hat, a bowl, or a folded box works equally well.

The cards. Tombola cards are grids of 15 numbers — 3 rows of 5 — each card using different numbers from 1 to 90. They can be purchased, made by hand with a ruler and a pen, or printed: the card maker at the top of this page gives you six free cards, and the Tombola Night Kit has the full illustrated set of 24 for a bigger table. Homemade cards are slower to produce but feel more correct.

The markers. Dried beans are traditional and cost nothing. Buttons, coins, torn paper, and small pasta shapes all work equally well. Use dried beans if you have them — not because it matters mechanically, but because the beans on the card connect the game to the version played in Italian households for generations, when nobody bought a set and everyone used what was in the kitchen at Christmas.

The pot. Every player contributes a fixed amount per card before the game starts. Divide the pot across the five milestones and write down the amounts. Ambo gets a small share, terno a bit more, quaterna more still, cinquina a meaningful portion, and tombola takes the largest prize. In many families the tombola prize is also the only one people genuinely care about, though they would never admit this during the earlier rounds.

How to split the pot

Prize	Share of the pot	With $2 a card and 10 cards ($20)
Ambo	10%	$2
Terno	10%	$2
Quaterna	15%	$3
Cinquina	20%	$4
Tombola	45%	$9

This is a starting point, not a rule. Some families add a tombolino — a second, smaller prize for the next full card after the first tombola — so the game keeps going. Others replace the cash entirely with a prize bag. Whatever you choose, decide it before the first number is drawn.

The caller. The most important role. Look up ten to fifteen smorfia nicknames before you begin, or let the free caller above announce them, and use them when those numbers are drawn. The Tombola Night Kit includes a one-page caller’s sheet with all ninety. Let the pauses happen. Let the room react before moving on. The caller controls the pace and the atmosphere of the entire game. Ten minutes of preparation makes an enormous difference to what kind of tombola gets played.

How many people. Tombola works with as few as four and scales without limit. More people means more cards in circulation, faster number coverage, and a louder room — all of which improve the experience. There is no upper bound. The game was designed for a full house.

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My nonna calls the numbers. She always has. Her brother still pretends not to notice when 22 comes out, my uncle still examines the prize bag like a state honour, and last year my six-year-old covered his first cinquina with dried beans and shouted loud enough for the neighbours. Tombola holds the shape of the whole family around one table — and that is the point.

Bring out the set, or use the caller above. Print the cards. Learn a few smorfia numbers. Let someone dramatic call. Let the room get loud. Whatever the scratch ticket wins goes into next year’s pot. Nobody will object. It will feel correct.

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Tombola is one part of the whole season described in our guide to Italian Christmas traditions, and the game that follows the fish in the Feast of the Seven Fishes — if you are hosting, our menu builder will plan the fish so you can save your energy for calling. If you are looking for a gift, a tombola set is one of the ideas in our guide to meaningful Italian Christmas gifts. Tombola belongs to the same post-dinner tradition as La Vigilia and the Capodanno gathering. For the broader story of how traditions like tombola survived immigration, read Italian-American traditions: what changed and what stayed. For how to get children genuinely engaged with these traditions, read how to get your kids interested in their Italian heritage. And for the full Italian table culture that tombola belongs to, read about Italian table manners and the rules many of us grew up with.

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FAQ

What is tombola and how do you play it?

Tombola is a traditional Italian number-drawing game played especially at Christmas. A caller draws numbers from 1 to 90 and announces them — ideally with their smorfia nicknames — and players mark those numbers on their cards. The wins build in sequence: ambo (two in a row), terno (three), quaterna (four), cinquina (a complete row of five), and tombola (the entire card — all 15 numbers). Each milestone earns the winner a share of the pot contributed before the game began. As Treccani describes it, the game is built around this structure of progressive wins, each one producing a shout and a shift in the room’s attention before the next round of calling continues.

Where can I get printable tombola cards?

The card maker at the top of this page prints six free cards, one complete page, so you can play tonight. For a bigger table, the Italian Tombola Night Kit has 24 illustrated cards arranged in real Italian series, plus the caller’s board, 90 number tokens, and a smorfia sheet for the caller. Print on cardstock if you can; the cards will last for years of Christmas Eves.

What do ambo, terno, quaterna, and cinquina mean?

They are the prizes in tombola, named after Italian number words. Ambo is two numbers covered on the same row of a card, terno is three, quaterna is four, and cinquina is the full row of five. Tombola, the top prize, is the whole card — all fifteen numbers. The words come from the Italian lottery, where the same terms describe bets on two, three, four, and five numbers.

How many cards are in a tombola set?

Traditional Italian sets usually contain 24 or 48 cards, or cartelle, arranged in series of six that together use every number from 1 to 90 exactly once. They come with a cartellone, the caller’s board, which is divided into six sections of fifteen numbers so the person calling can play too. For a family game, any number of cards works — let each player take one or two.

How do you call tombola numbers?

Draw a number from the bag, pause for effect, and announce it — ideally with its smorfia nickname first and the number second: “‘O muorto… quarantasette.” Let the room react before drawing the next one. A good caller sets the pace, comments on who is close, and keeps the game theatrical. If nobody knows the nicknames, the free caller on this page announces them for you.

Is tombola the same as bingo?

Similar in structure, but completely different in character. Tombola uses numbers from 1 to 90, has five progressive wins within a single game rather than one winner per round, and carries a strong Christmas and family-home tradition that bingo does not. The Neapolitan connection to the smorfia — the ancient system of symbolic nicknames for each number — also gives tombola a theatrical, performative dimension that pure bingo entirely lacks. Italy Magazine describes tombola as especially popular during the holiday season because the whole family can gather around it, which is precisely the quality that makes it feel unlike any other game.

What are the smorfia numbers for tombola?

The smorfia is the Neapolitan system that assigns each number from 1 to 90 a symbolic name drawn from folk culture and tradition. Some of the most famous: 1 is l’Italia, 8 is ‘a Madonna, 17 is ‘a disgrazia (misfortune), 22 is ‘o pazzo (the madman), 25 is ‘o Natale (Christmas), 33 is the years of Christ, 47 is ‘o muorto (the dead man), 48 is ‘o muorto che parla (the dead man who speaks), and 90 is ‘a paura (fear). A caller who knows even ten to fifteen of these associations and uses them transforms the game from a number exercise into something that sounds and feels distinctly Italian. The caller at the top of this page announces all ninety by name, and the full list is in our guide to la smorfia napoletana.

Why do Italians play tombola at Christmas?

Because it is the perfect post-dinner game for a mixed-age family gathering. Children can play, grandparents can play, and the half-attentive can still play. It requires no skill or prior knowledge — only numbers and attention — so the eight-year-old and the eighty-year-old are genuinely competing on equal terms. Italy Magazine and Visit Naples both connect tombola specifically to Christmas family life. The historical origin story also ties it directly to the domestic holiday table: the game moved from public life into the home during the Christmas season in 18th-century Naples and has stayed there for nearly three centuries.

How does the tombola pot work?

Before the game begins, each player contributes a fixed amount per card purchased. The pot is then divided across the five winning milestones — a small share for ambo, more for terno, more still for quaterna, a meaningful portion for cinquina, and the largest prize for tombola. The exact split varies by family. Establish it before the game starts and write it down. Mid-game disputes about the pot are the wrong kind of noise. The prizes themselves are rarely large — chocolates, clementines, a bottle of something, scratch tickets — but the disproportion between the prize value and the celebration of winning it is universally understood as part of the tradition.

Where did tombola come from?

The game is strongly associated with Naples. The most commonly repeated origin story traces it to 1734 and the reign of Charles of Bourbon in the Kingdom of Naples. According to Visit Naples, a dispute between Charles and the Church over the public lotto game during the Christmas period pushed the game into the domestic space of the home, where it became a family holiday tradition. Whether or not every historical detail is precise, it accurately describes what tombola became: a game that moved from public institution to family table and has stayed there for nearly three centuries.

How many people do you need to play tombola?

Tombola works well with as few as four people and scales without any upper limit. The more players, the more cards in circulation, the faster numbers get covered, and the louder the room becomes — all of which improve the experience. There is no minimum for fun and no maximum for chaos. The game was designed for a full house and performs best in one.

Can I buy a tombola set in Canada or the United States?

Yes. Italian specialty shops and import stores often carry tombola sets, especially in the weeks before Christmas. They are also widely available from Italian-focused online retailers. The game is also easy to assemble yourself: slips of paper numbered 1 to 90 drawn from a bag, cards made with a pen and a ruler, and dried beans or coins as markers. You can also print free cards and use the caller at the top of this page. The handmade version is, in some ways, the more traditional one — older Italian households used whatever was available in the kitchen, and the game was no less itself for it.