If you happen to be in the pretty hilltop town of San Valentino in Abruzzo on 10 November, as I was a few days ago, you will witness a rather unusual parade which opens the four days of festivities around the feast of St Martin.

Saint Martin, a chaste, holy man who lived in the fourth century, is famously known for having torn his cloak in half and shared it with a poorly clad beggar.  Somehow, he has ended up being associated with new wine and unfortunate husbands.

The event that opens the celebrations in San Valentino has little to do with religion and generosity, and everything to do with ribaldry.  At seven in the evening, there is a procession of men.  Well, men lead the procession, and women and children follow behind.  No priests, mitres, statues, or icons. no veils or vestments: in this particular cortège, the men wear horns, and carry all sorts of huge phallic symbols, mostly made out of olive tree roots and branches. This is the Festa dei Cornuti, or Feast of the Cuckolds.

Traditionally, a group of men would creep around the village at dead of night, and would light lanterns outside the homes of men who had been betrayed by their wives.  The night-creepers were in fact the lovers of the unfaithful women.  The unfortunate cuckolds, who, on waking, discovered what their wives had been up to, had to wear their coats and hats back to front to publicly acknowledge their status.

Nowadays, the procession is much more light-hearted, and everyone has a lot of fun.  The largest and most elaborate of the phallic symbols, at the end of the procession, is offered to the most recently married man in the village by the previous year’s recipient.  Groups of musicians sing: the bawdy songs are often improvised and particular members of the village are singled out for good-humoured teasing.

Wine cellars all over the town open up, and local pizzerias stop serving pizzas, instead preparing traditional beef spezzatino or stew.  The village is redolent with the mixed aromas of new wine and roasted chestnuts.

‘It is important,’ says the town mayor from the front of the parade, horns balancing on his head, ‘to understand an essential fact: the men who take part in the procession are not cuckolds.’