Italian cuisine customs celebrating this festival include wearing red clothing, eating Sicilian pastries known as zeppole and giving food to the poor. On Easter Sunday, lamb is served throughout Italy. A typical Easter Sunday breakfast in Umbria and Tuscany includes salami, boiled eggs, wine, Easter Cakes, and pizza. The common cake for Easter Day is the Colomba Pasquale (literally, Easter dove), which is often simply known as "Italian Easter cake" abroad. It is supposed to represent the dove, and is topped with almonds and pearl sugar. On Christmas Eve a symbolic fast is observed with the "cena di magro" ("light dinner"), a
Easter Drama known as the Easter Plays. Since the element of worldly amusement predominated more and more (a development of which Gerhoh of Reichersberg complained as early as the 12th century), the ecclesiastical authorities began to prohibit the production of Easter Plays in the churches. It became necessary to separate them from church services, because of their length, which increased greatly, particularly after the introduction of the story of the Passion. Fragments of an Easter Play in Latin dating from the 13th century are found in the Benedictbeurn Easter Play, also in that of Klosterneuburg, both of which, probably, go back to