Yesterday, 05:24 PM
https://nypost.com/2025/07/08/lifestyle/...just-dead/
![[Image: 071209-giglio-festival-willamsburgh-broo...&strip=all]](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/071209-giglio-festival-willamsburgh-brooklyn-43258941.jpg?resize=1024,683&quality=75&strip=all)
An Italian Brooklyn tradition for over a century, Williamsburg’s Our Lady of Mount Carmel Feast draws hundreds of thousands to an annual bacchanal of sausage, peppers and spectacle, courtesy of the festival’s main character — the gigantic Giglio, a four-ton, 72-foot statue “danced” through sweltering streets by a team of 120 men known as “lifters.”
“Few places on Earth still have anything like this — people come from all over to see it, and we’re getting bigger and bigger every year,” Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello, a longtime organizer of the high-in-the-sky happening, told The Post of the event — which kicks off for nearly two weeks on Wednesday, July 9, for its 138th edition.
![[Image: 130-men-carry-80-foot-60020903.jpg?resiz...&strip=all]](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/130-men-carry-80-foot-60020903.jpg?resize=422,644&quality=75&strip=all)
![[Image: 2021-williamsburg-neighborhood-brooklyn-...&strip=all]](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/2021-williamsburg-neighborhood-brooklyn-new-107572742.jpg?resize=1024,683&quality=75&strip=all)
As a band plays, helping lift the massive tower is both a huge honor — and a major challenge.
“Basically, it’s both a joy and a penance,” said Pat Fevola, who has been a “lifter” since 1976. He’s so devoted to the tradition, he got inked with a tattoo of the Giglio on his left forearm.
“All of the lifters become family,” he told The Post of the intense experience, which includes devotional masses. “That’s why we call it Christmas in July.”
An Italian Brooklyn tradition for over a century, Williamsburg’s Our Lady of Mount Carmel Feast draws hundreds of thousands to an annual bacchanal of sausage, peppers and spectacle, courtesy of the festival’s main character — the gigantic Giglio, a four-ton, 72-foot statue “danced” through sweltering streets by a team of 120 men known as “lifters.”
“Few places on Earth still have anything like this — people come from all over to see it, and we’re getting bigger and bigger every year,” Monsignor Jamie Gigantiello, a longtime organizer of the high-in-the-sky happening, told The Post of the event — which kicks off for nearly two weeks on Wednesday, July 9, for its 138th edition.
As a band plays, helping lift the massive tower is both a huge honor — and a major challenge.
“Basically, it’s both a joy and a penance,” said Pat Fevola, who has been a “lifter” since 1976. He’s so devoted to the tradition, he got inked with a tattoo of the Giglio on his left forearm.
“All of the lifters become family,” he told The Post of the intense experience, which includes devotional masses. “That’s why we call it Christmas in July.”