Saturday, December 20, 2025
7:00 PM
POET@FreeId/Antinoo Arcigay Naples
17th year
DAMNED HOLIDAYS
by ISABELLA PEDICINI
(Fazi)
Claudio Finelli, culture delegate Antinoo Arcigay Naples, will talk with the author
Saturday, December 20, 2025, at 7:00 p.m., at the association's historic headquarters Antinoo Arcigay Naples and the queer social bar FreeId, in San Geronimo alley 17, as part of the literary review Poet, now in its 17th year of activity, the volume Maledette Feste by Isabella Pedicini (Fazi) will be presented
With a witty and brilliant style, Isabella Pedicini tackles a major taboo, attempting to recapture the original meaning of Christmas, and all the holidays, through an irreverent and lighthearted comedy about the rituals and obligatory milestones that repeat themselves every year, besieging every family. A book for the holidays and against the holidays, to emerge unscathed from the Christmas maelstrom and from a moment we are sometimes tempted to forget.
I dream of an extreme act of disobedience to the dictates of the holidays of every month and of every nature. Give me the chance, even just once, to play a bonus, a freedom card that exempts me from endless banquets, visits, and pleasantries. I will appear sad before the great tribunal of celebrations and insensitive to those who have no one to celebrate with, but I will live that day with a light heart for having transgressed the implacable law of fun.
Agata is forty years old and has lived in Naples since leaving her small town in Irpinia at eighteen to attend university. She works at a contemporary art museum, has a husband, and two young children. Every morning, on her way to school, she passes the local stationery shop, a wonderland filled with colorful balloons, unicorns, and indispensable objects. The two street-facing windows mark the passage of time and the changing seasons, from the time for school supplies to the time for inflatables for beach vacations. When the Halloween window displays give way to the first Christmas decorations, Agata plans to join her family in her hometown. At her parents' house, preparations are in full swing for a grand Christmas Eve dinner, for which the entire family has been invited. But something unexpected happens, and it's up to Agata, who hates holidays as much as she hates cooking, to take care of everything just before the reception, orchestrating the dishes, relatives, and dishes and trying, between a perfectly prepared recipe and the tantrums of an elderly uncle, to manage inconveniences and guests before the local stationery shop dismantles its Christmas window display to move on to the wreaths for the next holiday celebration.
Free admission
