A strange, but pretty colorful display of celebrating New Year and Christmas traditions by Italians... While nobody truly can know, whether it was originated in Italy or not ( not, to my view) as Italians are Catholics and not truly Christians...) and Santa Claus is not a witchy-witch of theirs, but of German's or Russian roots, of course. But since I've personally can vouch for their (Italian) Celebration of Christmas when we've traveled through Netuno, a small town, in 1989 December, it was the grandiose and celebratory period there: all stores' huge glass (from floors to ceilings) windows were golden with some red and white !
And every child, including ours were given juicy fresh tangerines as a free gift, on literally every corner of their streets.
I do recommend this short book-album for its illustrations, but look for the much better reprisentation of Winter Holidays in Germany, Russia (the old one) or Holland, please.