Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site

Main Page This family-friendly site celebrates Italian culture for the enjoyment of children and adults. Site-Overview

 


Please visit my Italophile Amazon.com Shop

Lots of great gift ideas, including Panettone!

 

Gift Ideas for the Italophile, and Christmas in Italy

 

Christmas

Easter

Luxury Gifts

Books

Non Fiction

Mysteries

Majolica

Introduction

Gift Ideas for the Italophile

Gifts from Italy

Holiday Gifts

Holidays in Italy

Traditional Christmas Cards

Some Christmas Sites

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Italy gifts from Zazzle, a top-rated, secure, internet store that sells all sorts of products from clothing to stationary to mugs...

 

 

 

 

 

The Bible in Italian makes a wonderful gift for your religious Italian speaking friends. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hand carved and painted wooden pieces for a Crèche or Nativity Scene or Presepe are made in Italy and sold around the world.  Dolfi is an Italian company that makes them.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Porcelain statues of Saints Mary and Joseph and the newborn Jesus and the other figures of the usual crib or crèche are made in Italy and sold around the world.  Top brands are Roman, Inc selling the Fontanini brand, and Euromarchi.

Fontanini products at Amazon.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each Italian holiday has its associated food and sweets.  The packaging for Italian products are often more attractive than the products, but in the case of these holiday gifts, it's a tie.  You can check my Sweets page for more ideas and direct links to Amazon.com items for sale.

 

Perugina chocolate kisses, 'baci'

 

 

Chocolate eggs filled with toys, an Easter specialty

 

 

Panettone, Christmas fruit cake

 

 

Pandoro, Christmas cake

 

 

La Colomba, Easter dove shaped cake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here to go to my page with the Gospel according to St. Matthew's passages about the birth of Jesus, in Italian and English.  Or click on Giotto's fresco of the Nativity, above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here to go to my page with the Gospel according to St. John's passages about the resurrection of Jesus, in Italian and English.  Or click on Giotto's fresco of the Resurrection, above.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

Here are some gift ideas for friends and relations who enjoy Italian culture.  While I provide some links to on-line sales sites, these are not recommendations.  

Actually, I think it's most enjoyable to research your purchases on-line, then go out to the nearest Italian shops to buy them.  

Then you can wander into the nearest Italian bar and enjoy a caffé, or caffé con Vov, or cappucino, then stop in an Italian bakery, to nibble on a brioche, or pane, or focaccia.  I think you get the idea...

If you're home-bound, short on time, or don't have any Italian shops nearby, by all means try the Internet shops.    

 

Gift Ideas for the Italophile

Italian herbs make a wonderful gift for the Italophile cuoco o cuoca, fresh herbs in pots, or dried herbs.  I know from experience, the best dried herbs can be found in your nearest Chinatown, where you can purchase huge sacks of oregano, thyme, nutmeg, rosemary, sage, pepper, hot peppers, at reasonable prices.

Majolica is Italian pottery.  You can buy one piece or a whole dish service.  Whatever you get, it's always beautiful.  You can check out my Majolica page to get an idea of what I'm talking about. 

Italian Majolica

There is always the gift of Italian musicCD Roots is a site that lets you listen to samples of from each CD before buying it.  Another music site that has Italian CDs for sale on-line is CD Universe.  And the ItaliaMia site offers a link to Amazon via their list of Italian Artists available on CD.  Check out my Music page for some ideas.  I also offer links to collections at Amazon.com of Modugno, Mina and Verdi.  

Italian coffee and coffee-makers always make good gifts.  The Go Espresso site has lots on offer.  But they are generally available everywhere now, so I recommend you buy it locally in case anything goes wrong and you need to return it, or from an online retailer you know well. 

 

Italian coffee and the classic moka coffee-maker

But for the more discerning coffee drinker, a coffee grinder and roasted beans might make a better gift.  Visit my Coffee page for more information and some more store links.  The expensive gift is of course the all-in-one espresso-maker-grinder-water holder-milk-whipper.  Beware, you tend to drink a lot more coffee if you own one!

Italian wine, Liquors, Aperitivi and Digestives make wonderful gifts.  You can find out a bit about it on my Wine page.  But remember, wine is best when it sits for a while after traveling, and it's best not to have it travel too far.

Some Italian Digestives, 'Digestivi'

You can buy an Italian film on DVD or a film set in Italy.  The In Italy site offers films at the on-line seller Amazon grouped by director and even by location in which the film is set.  The Italia Mia site offers a listing of Italian films, actors, directors...  You can visit my Film page for more information, and some direct links to Amazon.com.

Books about Italy, and books set in Italy make a nice gift for an Italophile.  The In Italy site has Italian related categories that then link through to Amazon.com.  My Book page may give you some ideas for the classics.  And I've pages dedicated to genres, with links to works sold at Amazon.com:  

Italian fashion accessories can be purchased on-line and, of course, in the designer stores around the world.  Check out my Fashion and Beauty page for more.  Here are some direct links to shops with storefronts at Amazon.com.  They can give you an idea of what's out there and the prices you should expect to pay.

You could always give the gift of Italy itself, in the form of a Holiday in Italy, maybe a winter ski holiday?  I'll leave the details up to you but try my Travel page for some ideas and resources.

 

Gifts from Italy

These gift are actually shipped from Italy...

Italian (Sicilian) cookies baked with figs, almonds, pistachios, candied orange, sesame seeds, and Amarena cherries.  Shipped from Agrigento Italy by Adriana's Italian Gourmet Cookies.  (If you feel like baking your own, check out my Sweets page.)

If you wish to send someone a religious gift from Italy, the Italian Rosaries site specializes in Catholic related gifts.  They send a post card from the Vatican City with each gift.  They also run, from California and Rome, a gift site called Rome Gift Shop.

The Viccarone family in Sicily have a very complete site selling jewelry.  They are visitors to this site and have asked me to put up their link for 18kt Italian-Sicilian gold jewelry.  (You can buy religious jewelry from the Religious Jewelry Store via Amazon.com.)

Italy-by-mail is an on-line shop that sells Italian Products like coffee, biscotti, pasta, oil, pasta sauces, chocolates, and Nutella hazelnut spread.  But you can find many of these things in specialty shops and Italian shops outside of Italy, too.  Some even sell gift baskets full of goodies.

The Internet Bookstore Italia offers Italian books for sale on-line.  This link is to their top 20 list, so you can see what's being read in Italy.  I've put two bestsellers in the left column.  They've both been made into films that have been released around the world.  (Or you can search for the translations from Amazon.com at the bottom of this page.)

Hand carved and painted wooden pieces for a Crèche or Nativity Scene or Presepe are made in Italy and sold around the world.  Dolfi is an Italian company that makes them.  There are some images of their work in the left column.

Statues of Saints Mary and Joseph and the newborn Jesus, and the entire crèche ensemble, are made in Italy and sold around the world.  Top brands are Roman, Inc selling the Fontanini brand, and Euromarchi.  You can find some Fontanini products at Amazon.com.

 

Holiday Gifts  

Each Italian holiday has its associated food and sweets.  The packaging for Italian products are often more attractive than the products, but in the case of these holiday gifts, it's a tie.  You can check my Sweets page for more ideas, but here are a few:  

  • Spumanti
  • Christmas cakes like Panettone and Pandoro
  • Easter cakes like the Colomba
  • Chocolate Easter eggs filled with toys
  • Perugina Baci
  • Torrone

 

Holidays in Italy

Holidays in family-oriented Italy, are naturally a family affair.  So if you are a foreigner with no relations, expect to be lonely.  

However, you will be lonely in some of the most beautifully decorated towns in the world, and you will eat some of the most delicious food you've ever eaten in your life!  

Decorating Italian towns is a big thing.  It's not just a matter of sticking up a few trees and lights.  There are contests between major design studios to get the contracts to decorate the towns' major streets and squares.  

Then everyone and their cousin critiques the results and accuses everyone involved of kickbacks and nepotism.  It's part of the holiday fun; a seasonal tradition, of sorts.  Click here to visit a page of photos of some Italian towns' decorations

Most holidays are related to religious festivals, but not all.  There is the famous May Day celebration, when the Communist party organizes big outdoor musical festivals around the country, for example.

 

Traditional Christmas Cards

Traditional Christmas cards are generally preferred in Catholic Italy.  I've collected together some images you can use to create your own, or to send a traditional card in a modern way, via e-mail.  

Click here, to go to a page of images you can print, send with an e-mail, save to your PC, or set as the background of your PC's main window.

I've resorted to custom-making some traditional Christmas cards in Italian.  They're special cards for Italophiles to send their friends and family, to share their love of Italian culture. 

They are for sale at my shop hosted at Zazzle.com, a large, family oriented, on-line custom-products seller.  They ship around the world at reasonable rates.  You can pay by secure credit-card payments. 

The text inside the cards varies: Christmas and New Years greetings in Italian or English, a recipe, or the Lord's Prayer or Hail Mary in Italian.  I also have cards with prayers in English by St. Francis of Assisi.  I've left the option for you to add your own greeting to the card, or an image inside on page 2 of the card, so you can customized them for your family.

 

 

Some Christmas Sites

Notti Italiani's Christmas Traditions

The story of the birth of Christ illustrated by famous paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

This link is to an informative site about Bethlehem and the Christian traditions there. 

This Santa, or Babbo Natale, was snapped in Florence by an amateur photographer who has other photos of Italy at Christmas on her website which you can view by clicking here, or on the Santa in the photo.

A Christmas market in Trento.

The two previous images are from an Italian language website run by the town of Trento featuring special Christmas events.  Click here, or on the image above to visit the site.

 

Christmas service is broadcast around the world straight from St. Peter's Square in the Vatican City in Rome.  Click here, or on the image above to check the TV schedule from the Vatican for December.