This work aims to go through the historical, legendary and social framework of the extraordinary devotion harboured inside the people of Fara Filiorum Petri for Sant' Antonio Abate.

This intense feeling is the very hearth of the Farchie Feast: devotion makes it a bustling celebration full of life, each year new and archaic at the same time. Devotion is the heart of the values nourishing the feast, with its ancient symbolism, rituals - the one way to make individuals grow organically into society.

Even the young people of Fara Filiorum Petri feed on this devotion, which is a reference point for them, as undoubtable as the sun raising every morning.

Through this spiritual dimension they scorn the selfness of nowadays life and discover the importance of community.

"What is Man, so that Thou willst remember?". (Psalms, 8.5).

Here, this is one great aspect of mankind: to be able of communicating to God through their fathers' very acts, works, prayers, even in the age of individualism.

Farchia (plural: farchie) is a heavy bundle of reeds, made up in every single estate of Fara Filiorum Petri and burned with the other ones, once carried and put up in front of s. Antonio's church, in order to venerate the patron of the village. Farchie can be up to 1 mt. thick (about 3 feet) and 10 mt. long (30 feet). The reeds are held together by flexible and resistent willow branches.

Fara Filiorum Petri is lies at the foot of Majella. Like the neighbouring villages the Farchie feast is linked up with ancient fertility and purification rituals. The big bonfires recall the emblematic meaning of fire among pre-christian civilties: death and rebirth in the nature cicle. All the same, these timeless feasts have the anthropological and social function of strengthening the identity between individuals and collectivity.

The diffusion of christianity in Fara is due to Benedictins, who ruled the religious community there, up to the 1870s. S. Antonio's veneration has been greatly supported by the Benedictins in the area: a big protec- tiveness towards animals and forests from the danger of fire and power over demons derive from benedictine traditions. However, the devotion to this saint started since an epidemy plagued the population of the area around the year 1000: Antonian monks used to look after the sick at the time.