Summer Spirit of Giglio
A Brief History of the Giglio Feast in Italy and America
By Dr. Joseph Sciorra

In 410, around the time of his episcopal ordination, the Visigoth leader Alaric ravaged Nola, holding Paulinus captive. Paulinus died on June 22, 431.
In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory described a story of Paulinus offering himself in exchange for a widow’s only son captured by the Vandals in his Dialogues on the lives of Italian saints, an account he heard from his holy elders. While plagued with a number of factual inaccuracies and devoid of any reference to lilies, this written account would become the narrative basis for the contemporary giglio feast.
There is no record of the giglio feast for a thousand years after Paulinus’s death. It was Nolani physician Ambrogio Leone who provided the first account of the feast in the early sixteenth century. A religious procession headed by farmers carrying a high torch (cereo) made like a column, lit and adorned with sprigs of grain, moved through the town. During the seventeenth and eighteen centuries, huge wooden structures – globes, pyramids, ships, and other objects decorated with flowers – replaced the earlier candles. These massive and ephemeral architectural objects were similar to those found in the baroque religious and civic pageants prevalent during the Counter Reformation. In Nola, these ceremonial structures eventually became known as gigli, symbolizing flowers that were now said to be used by townspeople to greet the returning Paulinus.
It was in 1903 that immigrants from Nola incorporated the Società Mutuo Soccorso di San Paolino da Nola and held the first giglio feast in America. The hometown religious society continued to sponsor the feast until World War II. In 1950, the Società San Paola, consisting of American-born members, celebrated the feast one time. In 1954, the church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel took control of the Brooklyn feast and has held it annually ever since.
The feast was also introduced to other parts of the city and surrounding area. In 1918, immigrants from the neighboring Campanian town of Brusciano introduced their giglio feast in honor of St. Anthony to the streets of East Harlem, Manhattan. Parishioners of St. Anna’s Church held their feast first on 106th Street and then on 108th Street, off First Avenue, until the early 1970s. As Italians moved out of Harlem, they celebrated their giglio feast in different Bronx locations during the 1970s-1990s. In 2000, the feast was reintroduced to East Harlem, when it became part of the fete of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel on 115th Street.
The mid-1930s saw the introduction of giglio festivities to two new sites: Ravenswood/Astoria, Queens and Cliffside/Fairview, New Jersey. On June 21, 1936 Nolani in New Jersey sponsored their first feast on June 21, 1936, having incorporated a society the previous year. In Queens, their paesani celebrated a giglio feast in 1938 and incorporated the Società San Poalins da Nola the following year. Jersey residents held their last feast in 1983, while Astoria saw its final event a decade later.
The new kid on the block is the Long Island celebration. Started in 1999, it is currently held at the Long Island Railroad’s Massapequa Station. The suburbanization of the celebration accommodates the growing number of feast participants, many of them formally from Brooklyn and Queens, who reside beyond New York City’s borders. Like their immigrant ancestors before them, the Long Island residents have carried the giglio with them to their new homes. In this way, a new generation has rechristened the feast to express their desires and dreams in the 21st century.