Christmas is a time of celebration: While its original celebration was that of religion and faith, nowadays the Christmas we are used to most is the celebration of family. Now here at the Mafia-pedia, we are big fans of Christmas and so we figured, why not feature it here.. with you!! Thing is, even though we see many episodes of mafia life, little do we know how the mafiosi spend Christmas.
So we’ve talked about Omertà and other stuff which made up the mafia, but what exactly started the organized crime which is The American Cosa Nostra? Well that answer’s pretty simple: The Prohibition.
As one may notice, the mafia community was quite the violent one. Families occasionally declared war on each other for many reasons. For this reason, in 1931, Charlie “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky initiated The Commission in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Commission’s aim was that of uniting the families back together after the Castellammarese war and reduce the chances for any other wars of the like.
This may be the case, however most, if not all families of the Cosa Nostra fall under the Catholic faith. Taking into consideration the ritual with which men are inducted into the mafia, the use of the picture of the saint signifies the importance of The Catholic religion.
The Mafia is just like a business organisation
The mafia and a regular are practically identical to one another. Take a look at any business and think about it’s aims; when starting a business one must always consider that first. The aims of a business are those of making profits and gaining power above their competitors .. in other words being number one! The Mafia is the same; being on top of the other families and making loads of money. However this is not the only similarity. In fact both The mafia, particularly the Cosa Nostra and any top running business are structured in the same way. The latter is referred to the hierarchy.
To start off the blog we’ve talked about Omertà. Now we’ve moved on to the second most important thing in the introduction to the Mafia: The 10 Commandments of the Mafia
The structure of these commandments was the same of the original Commandments given to Moses by God on the Mountain of Sinai thousands of years ago, however the content is very different. This does not say that the 10 commandments of the mafia were Satanic or the like, however they were not angelic either. These 10 commandments were quite similar to the code of Omertà but longer and more structured. The 10 commandments were/are used solely within the Cosa Nostra.
As we thought of starting out this blog, we thought: “So what is basically the actual basis of the Mafia?”
Well that answer came up quite easily: ‘Omertà’. Omertà is the main code of honour within the mafia. It is a blood sworn oath of silence of secrecy taken by all members in order to become what is called made men/ wise guys/ good fellas and all the rest.
The word ‘Omertà’ in itself is set to have originated in the year 1909 in Corsica or Southern Italy. The creation of this word came from a dialectical form of the italian word ‘Umilta’ meaning humility. Abiding by this meant that you would submit yourself towards the group interest which is the family.
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