The Sacred and Profane Among Italian American Catholics: The Giglio Feast

An analysis of the Giglio Feast of Brooklyn serves as a microcosm for demonstrating the varied facets of contemporary ethnicity in America. Research on the Giglio Feast also forces a reconsideration of the re lationship between the sacred and the profane. For observant Catholics, it is the sacramental activity within the walls of the parish that constitutes the sacred; for others, it is the feast and the neighborhood streets that represents the "ultimate concern" (Tillich, 1952) of the feast participants. In terms of the feast's relationship to an official, institutional, and hierar chially defined Catholicism, it serves, for some, as an effective vehicle for evangelization into the faith. Yet, for others, it represents either a pagan ritual attempting to maintain la via vecchia (the old way) or some form of a secular neo-pagan celebration. For yet others, both the parish and streets were holistically integrated and imbued with a moderate sense of the sacred while for a remaining segment nothing involving the religious and feast activities warranted any designation other than that of an interesting, but little more than mundane, spectacle.