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Here is a short story about a very special person. We hope you will enjoy reading it.

On March 19th Italy commemorates a joyful holiday dedicated to St. Joseph, San Giuseppe, saint patron of family life, hand-labor, and carpenters. It is in Italy that St. Joseph’s day is also known as Father's Day.

This Saint is one of the least nominated by the Christian orthodoxy: compared to Saint Francis', Saint Joseph's life is certainly less known. Still Saint Joseph symbolizes the father, a figure that means so much in our life.
San Giuseppe is especially important in Sicily, where people frequently turn to him for assistance when situations become grim.

The name derives from the Jewish "Yosseph" = he who gathers, who puts together, who reunites - from the verb "assaph" = to gather, to increase. In the Bible it is explained as gathering people to be reunited to God. Therefore the word signifies completion. This word became in Greek "Joseph" or "Josephos", and then "Ioseph", or "Iosephu", in Latin.

The Saint we celebrate on March 19th was Yosseph ben Yaachov, Mary's husband and Jesus Christ's earthly father. Other than the legends that want him to be a good and pious man, he was a man who was very active and well known within his community. In Matthew’s gospel, it is said that Jesus was the son of a "téktón". This Greek word has been interpreted in many different ways. It was a generic title that was used to identify real estate developers, thus people with financial means; the job was not limited to simple carpentry work but it dealt more with heavy materials such as wood and stone.
Therefore the other interpretation of téktón besides carpenter is stone mason. In old Palestine the wood was used not just to build furniture and ploughs but it was the main material used to build homes and buildings. In fact the roofs in Palestinian homes were built with wooden beams connected to each other by branches, clay and mud.

Joseph’s roots are unclear; the gospels don’t say much with the exception of Matthew and Luke who claim he was the descendent of King David and lived in the small town of Nazareth. The two evangelists differ in listing Joseph’s father’s name: he was either the son of Eli or the son of Jacob.
According to the Apocrypha Joseph descended from David’s family and was originally from Bethlehem; from his first marriage he had six children, four sons (Giuda, Giuseppe, Giacomo and Simeone) and two daughters (Lisia and Lidia). After he became a widower he married Mary.
The Catholic Church has always refused this interpretation claiming that these were Jesus’ cousins or close relatives; in ancient Greek there are two separate terms used to identify siblings (adelfňi) and cousins (sěnghnetoi), but in Hebrew only one word is used for both.

In all of Italy, on Saint Joseph's Day a special type of pastry is served and sold in every single bakery: bignčs of San Giuseppe. In Naples these were fried and sold in the street and were a gift that everyone made to everyone else. Originally they were dipped in honey and cinnamon, now they have been enriched with a pastry cream filling, which varies from region to region.

This is the reality of our Ancestors before they left Italy. After more than a century, these cultural expressions have been maintained and survived as more than just memories.

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San Giuseppe: by Guido Reni