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ITALY EXPLAINED

Why is bingo so popular in Italy at Christmas?

In many parts of the world, a game of bingo is associated more with pensioners than fashionable parties. But in Italy it’s an essential part of the holidays for people of all ages.

Published: 19 December 2023 16:03 CET
Updated: 24 December 2023 08:30 CET
Why is bingo so popular in Italy at Christmas?
Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

On Christmas day, Christmas Eve, and at many New Year’s Eve parties in Italy the main activity – other than eating – is a game of tombola, which is very similar to bingo.

Tombola was created in Naples in the 1700s as an alternative to gambling, which the church didn’t approve of.

READ ALSO: Red underwear and smashed plates: Six strange Italian New Year traditions

The story goes that King Charles of Naples made a concession to the Catholics and said he would ban gambling during the Christmas period only. But Neapolitans found a way to get around the new law by playing tombola at home during the holidays. 

It’s still enormously popular today, particularly in southern Italy, so if you’re invited to a New Year’s Eve party at someone’s home don’t be surprised when all the guests gather round as the tombola board is brought out.

Tombola features a billboard with numbers from 1 to 90 and a card for each player with boxes containing 15 random numbers. These can be homemade using pens and paper, though many families will have a shop-bought tombola game.

Each player has one or more cards, for which they need to pay a small sum of money, or can give other items, such as sweets. This becomes the prize for the winner.

One player acts as the caller, and just as with bingo in other countries there are humorous names and associations to go with each number, which here are derived from Neapolitan dialect.

Players check off the numbers as they’re called, or cover them with dried beans, pasta, nuts, orange peel, or whatever they have to hand. The winner is the first to cover all of the numbers on the card.

The winner of the game is whoever ‘makes the tombola’, or who is the first to cover all the numbers on one of their cards, though there are sometimes also smaller prizes for getting, for example, five numbers in a row.

READ ALSO: Panettone or pandoro: Which is the best Italian Christmas cake?

If you have Italian family members you’ll know that they can get really into this game and that it can go on for a while, especially if there are children involved.

Another popular option is to get out a pack of cards near the end of the meal and linger at the table playing a game of scopa or buracco, eating wedges of panettone (or pandoro), and refilling the moka pot (or making another trip to the wine cellar).

Are you a fan of tombola? What other Italian Christmas traditions does your family enjoy? Let us know in the comments section below.

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MOVING TO ITALY

Readers recommend: Eight books you must read to understand Italy

After we published our own recommendations of some of the best books to read for those considering a move to Italy, The Local's readers weighed in with suggestions of your own.

Published: 25 April 2024 17:24 CEST
Readers recommend: Eight books you must read to understand Italy

In our previous guide to some of the best books to read before moving to Italy, we asked our readers to get in touch with your recommendations.

A number of you responded with your favourite reads about Italy; here’s what you suggested:

Ciao Bella – Six Take Italy

An anonymous reader describes this as “a delightful book about an Australian radio presenter who takes her husband and four children Bologna for a year which turns into two years (one being Covid).”

Kate Langbroek’s comic memoir “had me laughing and crying,” they write.

A Small Place in Italy

An apt choice for those considering their own rural Italian renovation project, Sam Cross recommends this book by British writer Eric Newby about buying, remodelling and moving into a cottage in the Tuscan countryside.

Cross also recommends Newby’s earlier work, ‘Love and War in the Appennines’, about his time as a British prisoner of war captured in Italy by the Germans in WWII.

READ ALSO: Eight of the best books to read before moving to Italy

Here, the author tells of his escape assisted by local partisans, “including a girl, Wanda, who became his future wife. A beautiful story,” says Cross.

The Italians

The Italians is written by veteran Italy correspondent John Hooper, who formerly wrote for the Guardian and is now the Economist’s Italy and Vatican reporter.

From politics to family traditions and the Mafia, the book tackles a range of aspects of Italian history and culture without getting lost in the weeds.

Simone in Rome describes it as “the best single volume on Italian customs and culture there is”.

READ ALSO: Nine things to expect if you move to rural Italy

Venice

It may be more than six decades old, but Jan Morris’s Venice is still considered one of the definitive English-language works on the lagoon city.

Book, Venice, library

A woman reads a book in Venice’s famous Acqua Alta library. Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Though a work of non-fiction, the book has been compared to Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited for its nostalgic, evocative tone.

“A personal view, beautifully written,” recommends reader Mary Austern.

Thin Paths

Described as a mix of travel book and memoir, Thin Paths is written by Julia Blackburn, who moved with her husband into a small house in the hills of Liguria in 1999.

Despite arriving with no Italian, over time she befriended her elderly neighbours, who took her into their confidence and shared stories of the village’s history under the control of a tyrannical landowner and the outbreak of World War II.

“Write it down for us,” they told her, “because otherwise it will all be lost.”

READ ALSO: Six things foreigners should expect if they live in Rome

In Other Words

If you’re currently learning Italian, consider Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s In Other Words / In Altre Parole, which discusses the writer’s journey towards mastery of Italian through full immersion.

Reader Brett says, “The book is written in both Italian and English, presented on opposite pages, so it’s also a nice learning tool!”

Lahiri has since written Racconti Romani, or Roman Tales, a series of short stories set in and around Rome riffing off Alberto Moravia’s 1954 short story collection of the same name.

A Rosie Life in Italy

Ginger Hamilton says she would “highly recommend the ‘A Rosie Life in Italy’ series by Rosie Meleady.”

It’s “the delightfully written true story of an Irish couple’s move to Italy, purchase of a home, the process of rehabbing it, and their life near Lago di Trasimeno.”

The Dark Heart of Italy

Reader William describes The Dark Heart of Italy by Tobias Jones as an “excellent” book.

The product of a three-year journey across the Italy, Jones takes on the darker side of Italian culture, from organised crime to excessive bureaucracy.

Though it was published in 2003, Dark Heart stands the test of time: “twenty-odd years old but the essential truth of it hasn’t changed,” William writes.

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