Remembering the North End

  While walking through  a neighboring  town's Italian  Festival, I was made to  reflect on the wonderful and unique festivals that I grew up with and still attend  in Boston's  North  End.
       The  North End  Feasts  are primarily  religious  celebrations. Most find their  origins from Sicily,and they  commemorate  either  a heroic saint that is a patron of a certain  area, or Mary the mother of  Jesus  Christ. As the  name "fiesta" implies  it's a celebration, but what a celebration! The feasts  have been celebrated in this  area,and in this  way for  around  for a century.
            The  first thing that  hits a visitor to a feast is  the  aroma  of every kind of  Italian food you can imagine, ravioli, lasagna, sausage, peppers, onions, calamari, eggplant, chicken, fried rice balls  called  aranicinis served with pasta sauce ( we still call it gravy), not to  mention Italian  canolli  , plus  all sorts of things to drink both  alcoholic and non alcoholic.  You have vendors selling  everything from sunglasses  to baby clothes.            
     No Fiesta is  complete with out music and there is plenty! Marching bands  accompany the statue  on its  journey through the streets of the North End,  playing the  Italian  songs  we grew up hearing. Performers  sing and dance while  people  spontaneously  dance the tarantella  in the  streets. Vocal  groups, many who are native to the  North End, perform on stage. Most Importantly  you have the  particular  patron saint  statue, adorned in colorful ribbons  covered  with donated dollar  bills . It  rests in a grotto, “watching the celebration” in between  its “walks” through the streets, to the  shouts of of" Viva" to that particular patron saint.              
  Most of all,  the  fiesta is people. Some are  tourists, many who are not Italian, but had heard of the  feasts  and wanted to  see and experience the event. Most are  original North Ender's  who still live in the  North End , or like myself  go back to the old neighborhood to  be as one  old timer said to me  "among our people”, to  recharge, to remember our roots, renew old friendships, to  remember  friends,and family who have passed away, but most of all, to celebrate our  wonderful, colorful heritage, in song,  prayer, and oh yeah FOOD! So if any one  gets a chance, St Anthony’s Feast,which is  one of the  biggest and most well known, runs  this  weekend. Go there, experience the  event,  savor the  atmosphere and the crowd, and maybe dance the  tarantella or shout" Viva SAN ANTONIO!" and  course EAT !!!