Palms of sugar coated almonds

By Annunziata Berrino

In Sorrento and on the Sorrentine Peninsula, it is tradition on Palm Sunday – when the entrance of Jesus to Jerusalem is memorialized – to make a blessing during the solemn ceremony of the so called “Palme dei Confetti” (Palms of sugar coated almonds) together with olive palm branches decorated with crepe paper flowers or with small shapes of cheese. The fronds, made from sugar with sugar coated almonds of different sizes and colours, symbolize blooming branches, flower baskets and small trees. Everybody carries their own palm: a basket or small trees by youngsters and branches for teens and adults. Receiving or giving a palm of sugar coated almonds is an expression of deep love: a grandmother gives it to her nephews, a mother-in-law to her daughter-in-law, a young girl  to her friend. These symbolic jewels are made by women who also take care of their distribution among family members and friends. In the last few years, thanks to great attention of some of these women, this tradition has spread incredibly.  While in same cases it remains a family tradition and a way of extra income, it has also become  a commercial business with many shops displaying them in  their windows on the Sorrentine Pensinsula. This popular tradition is accompanied  by a legend. It says that the palm of sugar coated almonds was the gift of a Saracen girl who arrived during the Saracen Turkish invasion to a fisherman of Sorrento who spared her life. It is clear from the story that the  legend mingles the local people’s perspective with the fantasies of women: on the one side – the omnipresent Turkish invasion, and on the other – the love story between a Saracen girl and the fisherman.
Nowadays, the legend invites us not only to interpret the palms as a symbol of peace, but also and mainly, to remember the meeting  of two different cultures and their reciprocal enrichment. Apart from the legend, it is certain that the making of “Le palme dei confetti” follows a tradition which started at the beginning  of the XXth century. As a result, they are collected as documented examples of iconography. In fact, like many things that are handcrafted from the female artistic psyche, the palms of sugar coated almonds are ephemeral in that if they are not immediately eaten after having been blessed,  they can remain on display in glass cabinets for years. Hence the initiative launched by the City Hall to organise an exhibition & competition of “Le Palme dei Confetti”. This will serve different purposes which include: giving value to female artistic endeavours, the preservation and promotion of this  cultural tradition among hosts and their visitors who come from everywhere to experience Sorrentine ulture, the celebration of both a religious and civil rite, the ehancement of economic value to palms as a typical product which guarantees its position in  the marketplace, and finally the encouragement and expansionf the technique of making a “palma” (that is to say; grafting coated almonds on wires in order to obtain a decorative composition) and the realization of other products with different aims which may find their own space in markets wider than the local one and beyond the time of Easter. Finally, this exhibition is a way to thank women of the Sorrentine Peninsula for having saved, preserved and improved this technique over the years often for no other motive than personal gratification. This initiative by the City Hall is devoted to them in order to give them visibility and to express our gratitude to the mastery and art they  offer every year in keeping this local tradition alive.