The Giglio Feast returns to Williamsburg after its second cancellation in 118 years

By Duncan Freeman

The historic 12-day Giglio Feast, in honor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, returns to Williamsburg this week after having been canceled last year for only the second time since 1903. The highlight of the feast each year is the first Sunday’s lifting of the traditional Giglio, a wide wooden platform holding a colossal seven-story tall tower made of aluminum that is adorned with papier-mâché flowers and is topped by a lifesize statue of Saint Paulinus.

Throughout the feast the tower is lifted several times and paraded through the streets by hundreds of local men led by appointed “lift Lieutenants.” Each year thousands of Brooklynites line the parade route to watch the lifters, eat Italian food from stands lining the street, and listen to the band that is performing atop the raised platform.

“The parish, the community, and so many others are very much looking forward to the return of such a grand and special tradition,” said Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello, pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Williamsburg, in a statement.

The Giglio Feast is a tradition imported from the people of Nola Italy to celebrate the return of Saint Paulinus after his capture by North African pirates in 410 AD. Paulinus, who had recently been named bishop, gave himself up to be enslaved by the pirates so that the boys that the pirates originally took could return to their families in Nola. Paulinus, known locally as Paolino, was freed by a Turkish sultan after he learned of the bishop’s selfless act. Upon his return the whole town of Nola greeted him with lilies (Gigli in Italian, and with no connection to the 2003 Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez vehicle), that symbolize love and purity according to the feasts’ website.

This jubilee was the first observance of what would eventually become an annual July tradition for the Nolani, who would bring it with them when they began immigrating to Williamsburg. These immigrants and their descendants maintained this yearly tradition—with the exception of a cancelation in 1903—and in the 1950’s Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church became the main organizer of the feast.

For more than a century the privilege of hoisting the Giglio tower was reserved for Italian-American members of the community, most of whom were the sons and grandsons of lifters. This changed in 2019 when after decades of gentrification organizers realized that they would not have enough lifters to raise the Giglio. Organizers quickly put out a call to the local community and received more than 80 volunteers to become first-time lifters from across the Williamsburg community.

Organizers have renewed their invitation for any able-bodied men to come and lift the Giglio for the 2021 feast and have set up an application portal on their website. More than 300 men are expected to lift the four-ton Giglio throughout the feast. Women are not yet permitted to partake in lifting the Giglio yet, though girls do participate in the yearly children’s lift that will take place on Thursday July 8th at 6:30PM.

The feast begins this year with a 7 p.m. mass on Wednesday. The first lift occurs on Giglio Sunday, the 11th, and there will be an “old timers giglio lift,” the following Sunday at 3 p.m. before the closing ceremony. “Our Lady of Mount Carmel Feast, the best feast in Brooklyn, is back bigger and better than ever,” Gigantiello said.