Since I married into my wife's large and extended family, Christmas has been a traditional Irish Christmas for me - but it wasn't always like that. Perched on the ridge of an Apennine foothill, my home town in Italy - a tiny village of six hundred or so inhabitants called Gallinaro - celebrates Christmas in its own inimitable way.

In the clear, starlit nights of December the vista arrayed below the town twinkles with the lights of the other valley towns: a terrestrial mirror of the heavens above. The high Apennine peaks that surround the valley like the rim of a bowl are snow-capped, and on moonlit nights the peaks
glisten pristine white in the cold night air, starkly silhouetted against the blackness of the sky. Woodsmoke rises almost vertically from the chimneys on nights like these, the unmistakable smell of burning oak logs fills the nostrils. In the stillness and quiet of the winter air the sounds of the chirping grilli are only a memory of hot, summer nights.

In the town's centre, Mario the barkeeper wishes the last of his customers a happy Christmas. Like all bars in Italy the customers are not there primarily to drink, but to see one another. In winter the bar rarely stays open after six; people go home to eat and rarely venture out later, and tonight is no different. The men of the village are here; Otello, Lucio, Massimo, Graziano, Gerardo and Nicola, wishing each other well for the festivities. Even today the bar is a man's world. Only in the summer when the village is awash with returned émigrés whose ideas differ from those of Southern Italy, do women venture in. Tonight the women of the village are at home, getting things ready for the big meal, looking at the clocks and wondering when their peripatetic men might choose to return home and help. Mario has opened a bottle of the sparkling Pinot di Pinot and the last drinks are on the house. Glasses are raised and clinked in a brindisi, a toast. Another year is closing, and the thought hovers; perhaps this time next year we will not all be here.

It's on the vigilia, the night before Christmas, that the real festivities begin. On the highest outcrop of the hill of Gallinaro stands the church, once an old Norman castle. Nestled around it, like chicks under a hen's feathers, are the oldest houses of the town. Narrow, cobbled, twisting alleys run between them with names that hark back to the town's mediaeval origins. Dim street lights mark the way, and in the stone-arched doorways and windows, candles gutter in the late evening breeze, casting flickering shadows on the stone walls. Inside these ancient houses the log fires blaze, hobs and cookers are covered with simmering pots and pans, people bustle from kitchen to table bearing platters that will form part of the feast. Outside in the alleyways you can hear the sounds of the preparation of the meal, the laughter and the talk, the piping voices of children filled with excitement. In the vast stillness of the valley these noisy gatherings are like little oases of life, tiny outcrops of bustling humanity in an eternity of silence.

In my cousin Gigino's house the clan is gathering for the Christmas feast, the meal when the whole extended family come together to celebrate life. Much of the day has been spent in its preparation; nothing is bought pre-prepared, the food will be lovingly taken from its raw state with care and skill all the way to its final resting place on the table. It will involve everyone - no one is an idle guest when the feast is being prepared. The best demijohns of wine will be decanted and placed on the table, the home-made liqueurs will be set upon the sideboard; the Nocino, the Limoncello and the Ratafia. But in one vital respect this feast will differ from the year's others. Traditionally there will be no meat. No prosciutto, no salami, no salsiccie. This is a meal with only fish.

Somewhere in the Irish psyche there's a lingering feeling that fish is penance food, something that you eat on Fridays when meat is unavailable or proscribed. But in Italy fish is deemed to be special; it's what you offer honoured guests, it's what you have for very special feasts. In poorer and simpler times the menu was baccala, dried salted cod, once a staple of a poor man's diet when times were hard. Traditionalists will still include baccala in the meal, but nowadays it's only one of the many fish dishes brought to the table of the cenone; the feast.

My cousin Maria is now the matriarch of the family. She organises her helpers and makes the final decisions on each dish. She decides when the pasta is cooked, she decides what needs more salt, how the table is set, who sits where. And when it's time to sit down at the long table maybe twenty people take their places and open their napkins in anticipation. The smells from the kitchen have had the gastric juices flowing for a long time now, the urge to eat has become an almost palpable thing. Already on the table is the antipasto, that is things to pick on, or fork onto slices of the huge two-kilo loaf. Bowls of winter broccoletti tossed in oil with garlic and lemon juice, pickled mushrooms, fresh mozzarella and scamorze begin to assuage the appetite. A risotto or sometimes a pasta follows, and then the highlight, the fish. In the fiercely competitive Italian kitchen this is an occasion to show to everyone exactly what you can do. Each dish is savoured and appreciated, the flavours are noted, the texture scrutinised, the presentation commented on. Fish is prized and expensive in Italy, so for most Italian tables it's important to provide more than anyone could possibly eat to ensure that the traditions of hospitality are fulfilled. There is no greater sin against the unwritten laws of hospitality than to leave anyone with the tiniest shred of appetite by the meal's end. So three separate fish courses is the norm in our valley, washed down with our own local white, Trebbiano, and just as often in defiance of traditional wisdom, with our own Cabernet Sauvignon, Atina DOC. This over-indulgence is always followed by crespelle, fried sweet pastry ribbons, which are the traditional end of meal marker.

Well, not quite: there's always the panettone. This is a high-domed, light sponge flavoured with vanilla which everyone gives to everyone else. Personally I'm convinced no one really likes it. People are always trying to give you some throughout the year - they open cupboards and take one of several out to pass on to you. They seem to be made for giving, not eating. And when all the food has been finally disposed of and everyone has had their fill of the after dinner liqueurs, it's time for the card games. The three stalwarts of scopa, tre sette and briscola are played in rotation and as always there's a lot of interference from those who aren't playing but only observing, there's a lot of shouting and a lot of throwing the played card onto the table with a knuckle-crunching smack that seems designed to intimidate opponents. And so, amid the noise, the drink and the revelry, the evening of the vigilia comes to a close.

At eight o'clock on Christmas morning the church bells begin to peel, voices are heard in the street, children run and shout. A slow trickle of people is making its way up the long flight of steps to the church doors. A low sun casts its light and a little warmth onto the church steps where the people in their festive finery are embracing and kissing one another. While the mass is said the men remain outside the church, standing on the steps, talking and smoking. For them being in ear-shot of the mass counts as being present. When it's over and the women come out blinking into the sunlight its time to go home where what's left of the previous night's feast will be the substance of lunch.

When my children were small I remember their delight at waking in the morning and finding their presents in a stocking and some at the foot of their beds, where Santa had left them. The wonder and delight on little faces is something no parent will forget and it's an image that forms a part of our Christmas day memories. It's a part of the magic of Christmas, like decorating the tree, making a holly wreath for the door, a visit to Santa's grotto, letters to the North Pole. And yet none of these things form a part of Christmas in Gallinaro. The German tradition of a decorated tree hasn't really come into folk culture, nor wreaths, Yule logs, reindeers, nor even Santa Claus until recently. These ancient Teutonic rites, which made their way into the UK and Ireland through the aegis of the German Prince Albert and Queen Victoria never really got to the Italian provinces. Our equivalent to the good Saint Nicholas is La Befana, but like the Magi of the Epiphany, he brings his presents to good children on Little Christmas, the 6th of January. And just like those Wise Men of old the gifts were traditionally money or small things of gold and silver. Our new world of TV and cross-cultural exchange means that Christmases are changing in Gallinaro. Trees are beginning to find their way into houses, but not real ones. Nasty little things made of plastic and tinsel are allowed into the house because unlike the real thing they don't shed needles over the floor of tidy Italian houses. Toys, too, are rapidly becoming the preferred choice of presents by young children and the increasing affluence of Italy ensures that those wants are met.

Maybe the homogenisation of Christmas traditions across Europe is unavoidable and inevitable, but I liked the differences. I liked the flowering of centuries of tradition that was uniquely tied to a particular place. I liked the feeling that what we did was what my forebears had done - that all the traditions were a direct link with the members of my family that had preceded me. It gives a sense of belonging, a sense of being rooted to the place and its people. And surely it's that very sense of belonging, whether to a place or a family, that we celebrate at the closing of every year.