The Healing Journey

March 19, 2025

A Sweet Memory of Her Aunt on St. Joseph’s Feast Day

By Karen A. Avitabile

March 19 has always meant more to me than just St. Joseph’s Day, the feast day of St. Joseph who was husband of the Virgin Mary and the father of Jesus Christ. It signified that I would receive a St. Joseph’s pastry from my Aunt Carmel.

Each year, she began St. Joseph’s Day by attending morning Mass and then driving her van (usually with a helper) to Lucibello’s Italian Pastry Shop in New Haven. She was on a mission: to pick up hundreds of St. Joseph’s pastries — called Zeppole di San Giuseppe — associated with the feast day.

These once-a-year pastries, dusted with powdered sugar and filled with vanilla, chocolate or ricotta, were a delicacy every recipient looked forward to. Aunt Carmel was convinced that zeppole made by Lucibello’s were “authentically Italian” and indeed the best around. She had pre-ordered hundreds of zeppole weeks in advance.

Then, she spent the remainder of the feast day delivering zeppole to friends, many of them homebound, and to the priests, sisters and staff at our local Catholic church.

I often pondered why Aunt Carmel was so generous on St. Joseph’s Day. Maybe she liked going to New Haven because her mother resided there as a teenager after immigrating from Italy.

Or maybe this was the one day a year she felt a strong connection to her father and brother – both named Joseph – who had died within one year of each other in the early 1970s.

But I think the main reason Aunt Carmel made a big deal of St. Joseph’s Day was that zeppole was a reminder of her proud Italian-American roots.

Every St. Joseph’s Day, I am reminded of my aunt’s zeppole deliveries by her many friends. I think Aunt Carmel would be happy to know that her generosity and kindness are still remembered today by dozens of people.

Since Aunt Carmel’s passing in 2021, I have honored her memory by doing what she did – driving to Lucibello’s and picking up zeppole to share (on a much smaller scale) with others.

I hope my aunt will be enjoying a zeppole in heaven on St. Joseph’s Day. A ricotta-filled zeppole was her favorite.
(Karen A. Avitabile is the editor of the Catholic Transcript magazine for the Archdiocese of Hartford.)

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