In\nthe town of Jelsi in the province of Campobasso, the wheat festival is held\nevery year on July 26th in honor of Sant’Anna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\npatroness of this small Molise village is celebrated with a spectacular parade\nof traglie<\/em> (traditional agricultural\nvehicles used to transport the sheaves of wheat) and allegorical carriages\npulled by animals or tractors, made of straw and wheat in ever new artistic\nstyles, inspired by both traditional decorative elements, such as the inevitable\np\u00eblomme<\/em> (rhomboid structures in\nstraw), as well as more modern themes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nreligious pretext of the representation is the gratitude to the patroness for\nsaving the country from the violent earthquake in 1805.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Starting\nat the end of June, the wheat for the floats and the traglie<\/em>, the most beautiful durum wheat with a high trunk\ncultivated to this purpose, is harvested on the border with Puglia during a\nritual involving the elderly farmers, women and young people of the village:\neveryone meets on the fields where they sing, reap, cook and eat together under\nthe maternal gaze of the statue of Sant’Anna that accompanies them, watching\nover the operations in the manner of a pagan Demeter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nharvested wheat is then blessed and it can be worked by the women who begin to\nmake the very long braids that will adorn the town. Over the course of several\nweeks, older women come together to work with younger ones for many hours a\nday. The wheat must be cleaned, selected and then soaked so it can be easily\nweaved. Meanwhile, in the garages and workshops prepared for the occasion, the\nyouths, led by expert craftsmen, make the carriages trying to keep the theme\nsecret until the day of the feast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At\ndawn on July 26th, while the blessed bread of Sant’Anna is distributed, the\nfloats gather along the main road of Jelsi and from there they parade\naccompanied by the band and folk groups to Aia di Sant’Anna where the trailing\noxen kneels before the patron saint to receive the blessing, along with the\nbrides, young Jelsians who were married during the past year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\nJelsi wheat festival has been awarded the European Year of Heritage 2018 mark\nrecognized by MIBACT as an activity capable of encouraging the participation\nand enhancement of cultural heritage as a shared resource, raising awareness of\nhistory and common values \u200b\u200band strengthening the sense of belonging to Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the town of Jelsi in the province of Campobasso, the wheat festival is held every year on July 26th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":529,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-24","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/festedelgrano.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/festedelgrano.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/festedelgrano.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festedelgrano.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festedelgrano.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/festedelgrano.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1476,"href":"https:\/\/festedelgrano.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/24\/revisions\/1476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/festedelgrano.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/festedelgrano.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}