Why is Christmas celebrated on December 25th and is it because of a Roman Emperor? Did Romans take off work and celebrate the winter holidays like we do? We'll tell you all about that as well as how Christmas is celebrated in Italy today. We'll answer questions like who brings gifts to Italian children on Christmas eve and do Italians have Christmas trees?

With the Jubilee coming up we highly recommend booking hotels in Rome as soon as possible, if you're planning on visiting in 2025. If you're visiting other parts of Italy in the coming year and want to know when to book hotels and flights, check out our episode ⁠When to Book: Hotels and Flights ⁠ and even ⁠When to Book: Trains and Buses⁠.

If you’d like to help out Only A Bag, you can use our affiliate links marked with an asterisk.

For hotels, we tend to use ⁠Booking⁠* since we’re already a part of their member program, but ⁠Expedia⁠* also has a robust member program with similar prices on hotel rooms. For an aggregate that seems to offer slightly better deals across the board, we recommend checking out ⁠Agoda⁠*.

If you're looking to book flights, we like to use the airline’s website, however, some aggregates do offer better deals, so we always recommend checking ⁠⁠Expedia⁠⁠* or ⁠⁠Booking⁠⁠* before purchasing.

And if you’ve always loved the idea of staying in Italy for an extended period and becoming part of the culture, we can’t recommend housesitting enough. While it does often entail taking care of someone’s pet, it can also be a gateway to seeing Italy in a totally new way. We use ⁠Trusted Housesitters⁠* which has a fairly steep upfront cost (a few hundred dollars) but that’s covered with a few nights of a house sit which should never cost you money.

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You can find more at ⁠⁠onlyabag.com⁠⁠ and contact us via email at onlyabagpodcast@gmail.com or on Instagram at ⁠⁠@onlyabagpodcast⁠⁠.