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For the first time in 2 years, the Italian Cultural Center celebrated the Feast of St Joseph (Festa di San Giuseppe) at the St. John’s University (JSU) Queens campus. The entire event was led and planned by Joseph Sciame (Chair, Italian Cultural Center Advisory Board and Vice-President for SJU Community Relations) and Fiorentina Russo on the 4th fl...

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Saturday, March 19, is the Feast Day of St. Joseph, and the lavish altars celebrating the day are truly a feast for the eyes. The altars offered as thanks for relieving hunger are overflowing with food: fish, pasta, pastries, breads in symbolic shapes. You won’t find any meat; St. Joseph’s Day always falls during Lent. The altars are also laden wit...

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While St. Patrick's Day, with its soda bread, green beer and corned beef and cabbage, seems to garner much of the attention in mid-March, another saint has a feast day with its own food traditions. St. Joseph's Day, on March 19, honors the man most Christians consider the foster father or earthly father of Jesus Christ. In Italy, where St. Joseph i...

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Sandra Scalise Juneau has lived St. Joseph's Altars all her life. At age 5 in 1945, she portrayed the Virgin Mary in the "tupa tupa" ceremony, representing the Holy Family knocking on the door, at her Nonna Accardo’s dining room altar. She learned from her two Sicilian grandmothers how to prepare and bake the special foods, and she has passed that...

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Preparations are underway for the return of the traditional St. Joseph’s Altar at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Denham Springs that will once again be open to the public after two years of interruptions brought on by concerns about the spread of the coronavirus. Members of the Friends of St. Joseph organization have already started bakin...

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In Ocean City, the town is getting a splash of Italian flare with the return of the St. Joseph’s Day Festival. Sponsored by the Ocean City Lodge of the Son’s and Daughters of Italy, the festival will reopen its doors to the public after a two year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizers tell 47ABC, you can expect the same authentic Italian...

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March 15, 2022 — 7 p.m. EST. Zoom Webinar (Register Here). Join us in conversation with Sandra Scalise Juneau, author of Celebrating with St. Joseph Altars and film-maker Kirsten Keppel. During the event the 18-minute documentary “Ringraziamenti: The Saint Joseph’s Day Table Traditions” will be shown. I AM Books in partnership with NIAF presents “O...

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At a time when many families were thinking of Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts, the Ocean City (Md.) Lodge of the Sons & Daughters of Italy was looking ahead to 2022, kicking off its planning for the return of its St. Joseph’s Festival and the festival’s cornucopia of homemade Italian foods and baked goods. The festival was last held in 2019, with...

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Our tour of the United States takes us this time west to the Centennial State: Colorado. Here, too, there is a vibrant community that celebrates Italy, gathered around a successful magazine that for exactly 10 years has been led by a young Italian American, Jenna Capra.  We thank her three times: because with the magazine she directs, Andiamo! she...

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They've been a tradition since the late 1800s, when Sicilian immigrants settled in New Orleans, and they're still going on, pandemic aside. Elaborate St. Joseph's Altars are unveiled every March 19, as Catholics mark the feast day of the saint who provided relief during a famine in Sicily. There are some changes: Fewer meals will be served, and mas...

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