Christmas Gifts
If today, for employees and workers, we speak of thirteenth month pay, Christmas bonuses and other financial considerations typical of the month of December, we can also identify some forms of gifts in the past.
Even the Jesuits used to give gifts to their employees, suppliers or household help at Christmas time, let us look at some examples.
We are in December 1833, in the Novitiate of St Andrew’s at the Quirinal we are preparing for Christmas, the house diary faithfully records the gifts given to various people:
“In these days preceding the Christmas festivities, various gratuities and gifts have been given and will be given according to the usual”.
It appears that the fixed gratuities paid in money were for: Housekeeper scudi 2 Barber scudi 2 Vacabili collector scudi 2 Office where vacabili are collected scudi 2 Wheat grinder to the millers scudi 0.80 to the keeper scudi 0.50 to the butcher’s shopkeepers 0.50 to the fishmonger’s 0.50 the poulterer 0.50 the liver seller 0.50 the charcuterie seller 0.50 To the Letter Post 0.50 To the Church Keeper and the Cleric 0.20 bajocchi each
A tip is also given to the bricklayer and carpenter who are present in the house at the time – 0.50 bajocchi each, the same is also paid to the Fontanaro dell’Acqua Felice.
For other people, however, it was customary to give the Christmas bonus not in money but ‘in stuff or edibles’ – a custom that still remains today in some small towns.
To the house doctor, for example:
two plates with two kinds of sweets, four dozen of lemons and four dozen of Portogalli, two bunches of broccoli, and two bunches of Gobbi and four capons.
Interestingly, gobbi, or white cardoons, are still known by this particular name in Italian culinary tradition, due to their characteristic curved shape. Oranges, on the other hand, are referred to as ‘Portogalli’, a name that also returns in the Neapolitan dialect,
The same material gifts, in similar quantities, were also given to the house agent and barber and to the butcher.
Maria Macchi
