The winter holiday season is here and all over Italy, preparations for the festivities are underway. Though with each passing year, the light displays seem to go up earlier and earlier in Italian city centers and shopping districts, the official countdown to Christmas still begins with the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or L’Immacolata Concezione della Beata Vergine Maria, celebrated on December 8.
The Immaculate Conception is a dogmatic position of the Catholic Church maintaining that from the moment when the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived in the womb, she was kept free of original sin, so that she was filled from the beginning with the sanctifying grace that Catholics officially believe is normally conferred in baptism.
