The Enduring Legacy of the Feast of San Gennaro in NYC's Little Italy
The Enduring Legacy of the Feast of San Gennaro in NYC's Little Italy
An In-Depth Look at the Historic Celebration That Fuses Italian Heritage and Catholic Faith
If the streets of New York City could speak, they’d have tales of faith unlike any other.
Of course, they’d also have stories of crime, destitution, and mayhem, but that’s another story.
If they could speak, they’d regale you with stories of saints like Mother Cabrini, Elizabeth Ann Seton, and Venerable Pierre Toussaint, who, in serving God, served the struggling immigrant population.
They’d speak of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen as he would make his way to the Adelphi Theater on 52nd Street to film his show Life is Worth Living.
And they’d speak of the immigrants who brought the devotions of their homelands across stormy seas, adding to the rich diversity of New York’s Catholic culture.
The streets of the city that never sleeps have seen it all.
If only they could speak …
Baxter Street in Little Italy would have a story all its own.
If for no other reason than it began as a hell hole.
Originally named Orange Street, it sat beside the disease-ridden Collect Pond, a cesspool that was eventually filled in so that cute little houses could be built — until they sunk into the fetid earth, creating the least desirable housing project in history.
It’s also the primary corridor through the notorious “Five Points” section of Lower Manhattan. A place riddled with street gangs and dwellings nicknamed “Dens of Death” by the iconic photographer of the time, Jacob Riis, whose powerful images depict the terrible living conditions and abject poverty often thought to exist only in much poorer countries.
But on a lighter note, it’s also where tap dancing was invented — and that’s something of a triumph of early race relations, as it was born of Black and Irish dancers at a tavern on its southern end.
To shake off the stigma of its notoriety, it was renamed for Charles Baxter, a legislator who died fighting in the Mexican-American War.
A good man by all accounts.
But Baxter Street’s real salvation would come in 1888 with the founding of the Parish of the Most Precious Blood — a first home for Italian immigrants seeking a place to worship that wasn’t in the basement of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mott Street.
The Church became an epicenter of the Italian-Catholic community and the home of many devotions, among them the famous Feast of San Gennaro.
San Gennaro, known to English speakers as St. Januarius, was the bishop of Naples in the 3rd century.
Tradition holds that he was a great defender of his people, and during brutal persecutions carried out by the Romans under Diocletian, he went to great lengths to hide and protect them, which led to his own capture and beheading.
At the time of his martyrdom, a devout woman named Eusebia collected a quantity of his blood, which to this very day miraculously liquefies on his feast day and during certain other holy occasions.
San Gennaro’s heroic act to protect his flock to the point of laying his life down for them has elevated him from bishop to the most beloved patron saint of Naples, and continued devotion through commemorations around the world makes this abundantly clear.
Thus, a few years before the Great Depression in 1926, a small group of immigrants from Naples erected a small shrine on Mulberry Street to commemorate the saint’s feast day on September 19.
Local merchants would bring out food to share with their neighbors, and before long, a tradition was born. From a gathering around an 11-foot wide shrine then … to something resembling a block party … to an event that now shuts down almost the entire length of Mulberry Street and dozens of surrounding blocks.
And now, each year, over 1 million people descend on Mulberry Street to join in the celebration, partaking of the literally tons of sausage and peppers, cannolis, and sugar-topped zeppoles while lazily waltzing through the 11-block section of Little Italy and being serenaded by the sounds of Italian folk songs and children’s laughter.
For 97 years, enduring the Great Depression, World Wars, and 9/11, it never ceased to fill the streets with thousands of well-wishers and the faithful.
And today, under a blue sky stretching across the five boroughs, the faithful carried the image of San Gennaro through the bronze doors of the immigrant-built Church to a street that holds untold tales of the human condition, giving it one more story to add to the chapter on faith and devotion.
Whatever stories the streets of this great city can tell — those that are fleeting, those long forgotten — it is those of Faith that will continue to be written and remembered until the end of time.
If you haven’t been to the celebration in New York’s Little Italy, you owe it to yourself to experience the incredible Spiritual and cultural richness and the never-ending culinary delights that put the festive back in festival.
San Gennaro, patron of Naples and honorary Saint of New York, please pray for us.
Contains excerpts from an article previously published on Aleteia - Reprinted with permission.