SAN MARTIN'S DAY

This is The Nursery Rhyme that children recite on November 11...

In the Venetian Calli on Saint Martin’s Day you can meet festive children who, armed with paper crowns on their heads and beaten with ladles on pots and lids, count on the generosity of shopkeepers to receive some coins or treats as a gift.

Legend has it that on a cold day in November, San Martino encountered an old cold. Martino took the cloak he was wearing and cut it in half with his sword and gave half to the old man to shelter from the cold. As San Martino went away the sun came out, and the day warmed up: here is the summer of San Martino, the name still used to the warm and bright days of November.

San Martino is also celebrated at the table with the typical pastry cake in the shape of San Martino a cavallo decorated with icing candies and sweets.

Typical of the festival but little known is also a sweet made of quinces that in dialect is called "persegada". It is found in all the Venetian pastry shops in the period of San Martino, it has the shape of a medallion with the effigy of the saint...

And let’s not forget that in San Martino every must becomes wine... the popular saying in which, according to tradition, the wine of the new vintage is drawn, the new wine.