December in Milan is packed with holidays, starting with the Feast of St. Ambrose to celebrate the patron saint of Milan. It’s a frenetic month in the city. Several holidays run back-to-back, tiring people out with all the preparations and festivities just when the Christmas season hits—the biggest holiday of the year for Catholic Italy. Then, once everyone’s past the holiday peak of the year and you’d think it would be time to settle down and stop celebrating until the New Year… nope! December 26 is the Feast of St. Stephen in Italy, when they celebrate Santo Stefano, a martyr who gave up his life for his Christian faith. That’s right, another holiday! The December holidays just keep coming, saturating us all with rich food, parties, and events for an entire month.

It’s a month when we’re endlessly lobbing Christmas greetings back and forth at one another. So I was shocked one day when an Italian child responded, “thank you, but I don’t celebrate Christmas.” There are more people in Italy than I’d expected who have converted to Buddhism, so maybe those children were from families that weren’t Christian?

Still, Christmas has become such a commercial holiday that almost the entire world celebrates it these days, even if they aren’t Christian. What would cause someone to stubbornly refuse to do it?

When I inquired further, I learned that the town of Bergamo traditionally does not celebrate Christmas. It’s located just 50 kilometers from Milan. I never would have guessed that a place that close would have a completely different set of traditions.

“So… does that mean you don’t get any presents?” I asked gingerly, feeling sorry for the child. “Nope,” they replied. “But I got a lot of presents on December 13th.”

December 13??

There are a lot of holidays in December, but I’d never heard of one falling on December 13. That’s the day of the Feast of St. Lucy. Apparently there’s no Santa Claus in Bergamo, but St. Lucy brings presents on December 13.

The name Lucy means “light.” December 21 is the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year, but on the Gregorian Calendar, the solstice falls on December 13. So apparently, they celebrate the day that St. Lucy brings the light. You’d think that the tradition of celebrating St. Lucy would remain in nearby Brescia and Verona, but surprisingly it’s just 30 kilometers to the southeast of Milan in Lodi, and another 30 kilometers southeast in Cremona, where it lives on. And if you go all the way south to Syracuse on the island of Sicily, St. Lucy is their patron saint. So naturally they celebrate December 13 there.

When I asked a friend who lives in Bergamo about it, they were kind enough to satisfy my curiosity, telling me that they celebrated December 13 as a kid, but never once celebrated the 25th. They then added that Santa Claus is his Dutch name, Saint Nicholas is his English name, and that in Italian he is known as San Nicola. The Feast of San Nicola falls on December 6, so there are some towns in Italy where Santa Claus comes on that day.

No matter what, December is completely packed with holidays!