New Year

The first day of January is a religious festival of precept. Eight days after Christmas, in fact, the Catholic liturgy commemorates the Most Holy Mary, Mother of God.

Traditionally, like all the moments of transition from old to new, both in the calendar cycle and in the astronomical cycle (still close to the winter solstice), even the period comprising the end and the beginning of the year was considered suitable for drawing omens from the world of nature, especially from plant species.

In Cagliari, for example, olive leaves were used for a practice called s'olieddu. To find out if two young people would get engaged, two fresh olive leaves were taken and, written on one the boy's name and the girl's name on the other, they were bathed in saliva and placed on hot ash: if the leaves, crumpled up, came closer, it meant that the two would move.

Another form of prediction, always prevailing in Cagliari, were is ciascus, often burlesque answers, written on cards that were drawn by lot like the numbers of a bingo.

In the Iglesiente, an ancient custom, called candeberis, has been brought back to life, consisting in the offering to people in need by farmers of cooked wheat seasoned with milk and honey; the name and custom refer to the donum calendarium of the Roman era, the exchange of good wishes that took place at Calende, on the first day of January. Some quizzes from New Year's Eve probably have the same origin: such as Candelaria in Orgosolo and on Candelàriu Nuorese. The latter is documented by Grazia Deledda in her youth work on the popular traditions of Nuoro. The result is that the name candelàriu was assigned both to the children's quest held in the capital of Barbagia on the last day of the year, to the object of the donation (dried fruit) and, finally, to a bread “small, white, jagged, shiny, in the shape of birds and other animals”, specially packaged for the occasion. The

donum calendarium also seems to be able to find traces in the name of the candelaus/scandelaus, refined pastry and candied almond sweets found in the Campidano, with a production center of excellence in Quartu Sant'Elena. Perhaps once upon a time this variety of sweets, now all-season, was associated specifically with the holidays at the end of the year. In the absence of other documentation, it is the linguistic data, with the related studies, that make us lean in this direction.

Faced with the uncertainty and the many unknowns of the new year that was beginning, there were numerous propitiatory rites. Most of it involved food, whose consumption was preceded by auspicious rituals. In some Logudoro villages, for example, it was prepared on càbude, augural bread with an anthropomorphic shape, while elsewhere it was a focaccia stuffed with sapa. In Ozieri, the head of the family broke it on the head of his youngest son (in other countries on that of his eldest son), reciting the formula three times “Good luck to Mizas! ” ('The good in the thousands').

In some villages of Logudoro, such as Pattada, and Barbagia, shepherd families prepared sa peltusita, a lucky bread with a hole (peltusu) in the center and on whose surface were placed figures of bread depicting figures and environment of the pastoral world; such as the shepherd with the dog, the sheepfold, the sheep.

Peasant families, on the other hand, prepared sa giuada (lit. 'the yoke'), a round bread on which they placed depictions of the farmer, the yoke of the oxen, and wheat seeds in quantity as a wish for abundance.

Still in relation to the wish value of wheat, in some countries it was fed to pets and thrown it high in the different parts of the house, wanting to simulate the high pile of harvest that one hoped to obtain once the agrarian cycle ended.