I was very young and I still didn't know anything about Christmas and gifts (yes, my sister was born less than a month ago and I was happy waiting for her).

I was told that something special was going to happen that night. Santa Lucia would arrive. I started to imagine her, but vaguely, young and smiling with long hair, and very light because she flew.
The next morning I went down the stairs and entered the living room through the side door, out of darkness, in light, several packages of indistinct color and a wicker wheelchair with wooden wheels that we have been playing with for a long time. But what instantly attracted me, in the center of everything on a coffee table, was a piece of shiny tinfoil crumpled up on a bar of chocolate. I remember it very large, wrapped in yellow and red, but especially I remember the wonder of finding it already begun (the surprises weren't supposed to be intact ?, you know that even if no one has told you yet).
A moment of suspension and then the response of the grown-ups: "Saint Lucia was hungry and ate some during the trip". My enthusiasm mixed with amazement skyrocketed. Santa Lucia, you were magical and at the same time true, you flew and you had to eat too and you chose my chocolate.
Thus began a friendship that has lasted for over half a century and which I also tried to pass on to my three grandchildren, to return in passing to that first Christmas spell …

For two years, on Saint Lucia's day, I have been preparing a bowl with pomegranate grains, chopped walnuts and cooked must (I simplified a recipe that they make in Matera on December 13, where they also use boiled wheat and, instead of cooked must , a fig jam). The whole is sweet and sour, sparkling, and the flavor shimmers.