A couple of weeks ago, in Jessup, Pennsylvania—the small town next to mine when I was a boy—large crowds of people showed up to celebrate the annual “Race of the Saints,” called in Italian La Corsa dei Ceri, “the Race of the Candles,” because that is what the structures look like.

You must imagine, each set and pegged upright on wide and sturdy platforms of wooden beams, three candle-like pedestals as tall and thick as tree-trunks, surmounted by the images of three saints, George, Anthony, and the bishop Ubaldo.