You may know that your evening meal in Italy is la cena (dinner or supper), but il cenone is a different matter.
Cenone (hear it pronounced here) literally means "big dinner" – it's the augmentative form of cena (dinner), created by adding the suffix -one.
But when Italians say it's a "big dinner" they're not just talking about the particularly large quantity of food, but also the importance of the occasion, as well as the number of guests at the table.
Dove vai per il cenone?
Where are you going for the meal?
According to the Treccani dictionary, it's used to mean a particularly lavish dinner and usually for the meal eaten on Christmas Eve (la Vigilia di Natale) or on New Year's Eve (la vigilia di Capodanno).
Domani sera facciamo il cenone di Capodanno a casa nostra.
Tomorrow night we're having the New Year's Eve feast at our place.
While you could technically use cenone for any lavish multi-course meal with many guests, it's strongly associated with these two holiday dinners.
The Christmas Eve cenone traditionally features fish and seafood (many Catholics abstain from meat on this date), while the New Year's Eve version traditionally features cotechino or zampone (pork sausages) perhaps eaten with a dish of lentils at midnight - after the multi-course meal itself - for good luck and prosperity in the coming year.
So when someone invites you for il cenone, you'll want to arrive hungry - and expect to still be eating at midnight.
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