The Feast of the Assumption Festival ( it, Festa dell'assunzione; also locally referred to informally as The Feast (''La festa'')) is an annual four-day

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

and Italian American street

festival A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival ...

in the

Little Italy Little Italy is a general name for an ethnic enclave populated primarily by Italians or people of Italian ancestry, usually in an urban neighborhood. The concept of "Little Italy" holds many different aspects of the Italian culture. There are ...

neighborhood of

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, centered on Holy Rosary Church on Mayfield Road near its intersection with Murray Hill Road.

History and traditions

Held annually since 1898 (with exceptions in 1917–18, 1942–45 and 2020), the Feast occurs around August 15 in concordance with the observance of the

Assumption of Mary The Assumption of Mary is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII defined it in 1950 in his apostolic constitution '' Munificentissimus Deus'' as follows: We proclaim and define it to be a dogma revealed by ...

. It includes a procession of a statue of the

Virgin Virginity is the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. The term ''virgin'' originally only referred to sexually inexperienced women, but has evolved to encompass a range of definitions, as found in traditional, modern ...

through the streets leading to the church, as well as a nightly

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...

. In addition to its religious nature, the Feast is also a general celebration of Cleveland's Italian cultural heritage in its largest Italian neighborhood, which has demographically remained relatively unchanged since its establishment in the 19th century. Highlights of the festival include live musical performances, carnival and casino games,

carnival rides Amusement rides, sometimes called carnival rides, are mechanical devices or structures that move people especially kids to create fun and enjoyment. Rides are often perceived by many as being scary or more dangerous than they actually are. This ...

and

fireworks Fireworks are a class of low explosive pyrotechnic devices used for aesthetic and entertainment purposes. They are most commonly used in fireworks displays (also called a fireworks show or pyrotechnics), combining a large number of devices ...

. The Feast is also famous for its food, with numerous street booths operated by local restaurants and shops from around the neighborhood selling traditional Italian food and other items to the large crowds that come to the neighborhood from all over the

Greater Cleveland The Cleveland metropolitan area, or Greater Cleveland as it is more commonly known, is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Cleveland in Northeast Ohio, United States. According to the 2020 United States Census results, the five-county ...

area.

References

External links

Little Italy, Cleveland

Holy Rosary Church
Italian-American culture in Cleveland Festivals in Cleveland Christianity in Cleveland Festivals established in 1898 1898 establishments in Ohio {{reli-festival-stub