Easter in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, Sicilia

Hello, I am Alex van der Hoeff and I am temporarily living in Barcellona, Sicily, for my internship. Last weekend everybody hopefully ate a lot of tasty dishes, organized Easter egg hunts or went to a religious service or procession. I attended the procession here in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto on good Friday and, I must say, it was a special experience. I would like to tell something about the celebration of Easter in Italy in general and the procession I saw here in Barcellona. This procession is by the way organized in almost the same way as in the south of Spain.
While you will probably won’t see many Easter bunnies if you’re in Italy for Easter, you will find some interesting Italian Easter celebrations, rituals and traditions. For example; every family has a big extensive pranzo, which means lunch, whereby all kinds of dishes like home made lasagna ( al ragu), rollè di tacchino, pastiera napoletana, uova di pasqua a volontà and fragola con panna, are prepared. The monday following Easter, la Pasquetta is also a holiday throughout Italy, while the days before Easter in Italy include solemn processions and masses. Religious processions are held in many towns on the friday or saturday before Easter and sometimes on Easter Sunday. Many churches have special statues of the Virgin and Jesus that play a big part in the processions. The statues may be paraded through the city or displayed in the main square. Olive branches are often used instead of or along with palm fronds in the processions and to decorate churches. Parade participants are often dressed in traditional ancient costumes and they sing psalms all together while pushing forward their religious decorated carriage. The carriages contain religious sculptures, a lot of flowers, candles and other lights, and all together they tell the story of the passion of Jesus Christ. A lot of money, time and preparation is put in preparing the procession, so Good Friday was a day of result, passion and a lot of people here in Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto