FROM Carol Field’s Celebrating Italy (William Morrow and Company, 1990):

“By the middle of December you can smell Christmas in the crisp air, in the chestnuts roasting at street corners, and in the steamy fragrances spilling out the doors of bakeries and restaurants. You can feel it in the sharp drop of temperatures as fountains frost over, leaving tritons and nymphs riding on icicles. You can hear it in the mournful tunes played by the zampognari, Italy’s bagpipers, shepherds who have come down from the Abruzzo mountains dressed in crisscrossed leather leggings that reach up to the knees, shaggy sheepskin vests worn sheared side out, and slouchy felt hats. The keening sounds of their bagpipes and rough rustic flutes swirl eerily through the streets, a melancholy poetry that is as familiar to Rome as Santa’s sleighbells are to an American. The zampognari walk slowly in twos and threes up and down the Via Condotti and the Via della Croce and the other elegant shopping streets below the Spanish Steps, where, starling reminders of the shepherds at the manger in Bethlehem, they play their ancient instruments in front of rich window displays of furs, leathers and silks. The zampognari arrive some days before Christmas, but they used to arrive much earlier and always charged a set rate for a nine-day serenade to the Madonna called a novena. Now they merely hold out their hats and everyone drops in a few coins or bills.”

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