Food was a central element in the connections between members of the entire community, as well as among close neighbors and friends. Street festivals, frowned on by the Church but attended by hundreds of Italians, were organized by small societies in all the Italian neighborhoods to honor the patron saints of various villages. The Chicago Daily Tribune described a festa in 1910:

The Sicilians of the Nineteenth Ward celebrated the assumption of the virgin last night. On Polk St. near Halsted, the largest of the altars was built. Five large arches were erected, covered with green branches and vines, and Sicilian and American flags were swung above the arches. At the end of the bower-like avenue was the altar in a high, broad enclosure. Tiers of lighted candles flickered and flared in front of the image of the virgin, which had been brought from Sicily and set up in the open air according to the old custom.

Two blocks of Ewing St. were hung with lanterns suspended above the sidewalks on green-covered lines; while on Jefferson St., the green arches were so close together that they made almost a perfect bower.

There are at least 1,100 Sicilians in Chicago, and with few exceptions, they live in the Nineteenth Ward. They were all out, wearing the national costumes and full of the spirit of the holiday. The Italian headdresses and scarfs, and the soft Italian voices made this religious ceremony as foreign in appearance as though it had been celebrated in Sicily itself. Tonight and tomorrow night the candles will be lit again before the altars, and the crowds will fill the streets. On Sunday there will be a parade. [55]

No feast was complete without the sale and serving of traditional foods. Rosa Casettari reported,

Oh, the streets were decorated wonderful-they looked like heaven, with all different colored electric lights. And there were the stands to sell the snails, to sell the pop, to sell the pieces of watermelon, and all kinds of gamble things. And the fireworks, I don't know how much those fireworks cost! You could hear them five miles away. The streets were chuckful, packed-down with people when they carried the crucifix. Twelve men it took to carry the platform, and three men did nothing else but pin the money on the ribbons. So much money! [56]
At the feast of St. Rocco di Potenza on Ohio Street, sausage, clams, oysters, chi chi, lupinis, and small figurines made of cheese were sold from stands around the bandstand. At the Feast of the Assumption near Wentworth and Alexander Place, booths sold Italian sweetmeats and penny slices of watermelon. The society of San Giacomo di Capizi roasted a lamb for their namesake's feast day. The largest festa was held in Melrose Park. Rosamond Mirabella, whose aunt hosted the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel upon her farmland, recalled, "All I remember is that we worked like nobody's business on Saturday cooking the big basket of food... chickens and whatnot." Unlike the privacy of the Jewish Sabbath, Italian religious occasions were celebrated by the entire community. Feste were sponsored by societies composed of male members from an individual town but they were attended by Italians from throughout the city, bringing together families from different villages and even regions of Italy. [57]

The religious celebrations most closely connected to food were the St. Joseph's Day tables prepared by Sicilian women. The rituals of St. Joseph's Day on March 19, more than any other holiday, highlight the significance of food in Italian culture. On Saint Joseph's Day, Sicilian women whose prayers for a sick family member had been answered, prepared a lavish table of food in honor of the saint. A profoundly religious act through which one expressed thanks, the table was also a social act which extended the good fortune of the sponsor to the community. One woman on the Near North Side had prepared a table yearly for twenty-seven years in gratitude for her husband's recovery from heart trouble. Social worker Anna Zaloha described the offering in 1937:

The table took up the whole of the living room. It was built up like an altar. Over it was suspended a crocheted lace canopy lined with pink silk and decorated with artificial flowers, ribbons and streamers. A picture of St. Joseph surmounted the whole and vigil lights and huge candles were placed here and there. On this table were placed dishes of every kind of vegetable available, prepared in two or three different ways, with eggs, with fried bread crumbs, fried in oil; every kind of fruit, fresh and dried, including St. John's bread; several kinds of fish prepared in various ways, stuffed and roasted, fried with eggs, in a salad; many kinds of Italian cookies and loaves of bread baked in shapes significant of St. Joseph, such as a staff, a hand, a pouch; Italian sweets, and a huge cake iced with pink icing with St. Joseph written in white icing, and lastly, a bottle of wine.

Family or friends were chosen to dramatize the journey of Joseph and Mary's search for lodging in Bethlehem and the drama culminated in an invitation to the actors, and afterwards to visitors, to eat from the prepared table. No food was wasted and what was not eaten or taken home was given to charity. [58]

Kay Turner and Suzanne Seriff have studied current celebrations in Texas and they suggest that of all holidays, St. Joseph's Day is the most woman-centered. It emphasizes the role of women as nurturers and family caretakers and highlights "the supreme gift of all womankind: the gift of life" symbolically represented by the act of feeding. They conclude, "The worth of a celebration such as St. Joseph's is counted in the way in which it gives dramatic and aesthetic recognition to the sustaining values of nurturance, care, comfort, and support - the birthright of the mother." On this holiday, food becomes a method of thanks, a celebration, a sharing with friends, an act of charity, and even an assertion of individual worth and competence.[59]