Every Italian received a Tombola set as a Christmas present at some stage of their childhood. Mine, however, was a bit of a historical relic, as I had inherited my brother’s, who is eleven years my senior, and there were plenty of bits and pieces missing. Cards were all bent and a lot its little wooden numbers were missing. I still remember them, the size of a sugar candy, with red numbers in relief. 

Not that we ever played with tombola as children: there was too little action and all those numbers were too reminiscent of a math class to be enjoyable, yet we loved the idea of it, because tombola came out of its box only at Christmastime and it had the scent of mandarin peels on the fire and of snow.