This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: For two weeks in September, everyone wants to be Italian—at least judging by the crowds at the annual Feast of San Gennaro in New York City's Little Italy. Founded in 1926, the largest and longest-running Italian festival in the United States celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, with locals and tourists alike descending upon Mulberry Street in Manhattan to celebrate Italian American culture.
To be sure, there's plenty that's commercialized: Frank Sinatra impersonators croon "New York, New York," while vendors hawk shirts with quotes from "The Godfather" and "The Sopranos" at astronomical prices. Classic Italian American fare like chicken parm subs and sausage and peppers fly off food carts. And yet in my work as a medievalist, I've explored how this festival champions traditions that go back thousands of years.
If anything, the fact that centuries-old rituals coexist with sweet Italian sausages and big, floppy pizza slices speaks to a lengthy, strenuous and beautiful process of cultural assimilation. Between 1881 and 1920, over 4.5 million Italians immigrated to America. Thousands, most of whom hailed from southern Italy, settled on Manhattan's Lower East Side to form what became Little Italy.
These "huddled masses" faced all sorts of difficulties: overcrowded tenements, trouble finding work, racial discrimination and suspicion of their southern Italian Catholic practices, particularly from Irish Catholics. The Italian procession of religious statues and the street parties that followed, the Irish argued, looked far too pagan and idolatrous to be considered "real" Catholicism. Irish suspicion of such practices was also shared by local Protestants.
But by the early 20th century, Italian communities had grown so large that they could fund their own Italian-speaking churches. One such parish was the Church of the Most Precious Blood, built in 1904 on Baxter Street. In 1926, a group of parishioners led by Alexander Tisi organized a tribute to one of the most popular holy figures from southern Italy: St.
Januarius, known in Italian as San Gennaro. An early Christian bishop, Gennaro was brutally beheaded outside Naples on Sept. 19 in AD 305 on account of his faith. His execution was one of several that took place during the Diocletian Persecutions, a systematic campaign against Christians by the Roman Empire.
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