During Christmas’ Eve, near Milan’s Central Railway station, unusually empty and covered in snow, some poor people who wander in the area gather around the fire coming from a dumpster. One of them, Secco, who doesn’t speak much and who had a glorious past, finds a box of matches that warms the soul and makes you want to tell something.

One of the gathered people starts a tale. It is an animistic, fantastic, ancestral tale: the memory of a Louis Prima concert, the most Christmas singer who never recorded a Christmas song, a cemetery of washing machines and household appliances, where you can find la Cupa’s tree, whose light attracts every night animals; a weredog, the so called pumminale; a courtship between old, out of tune pianos and the arrival at Midnight; when the matches are over, of Santo Nicola, the Italian and authentic ancestor of the most global Santa Claus. 

His are the good speech matches, that make fantasy vibrate and give eloquence. This is the only gift that Santo Nicola brings with him, an emigrant, alone saint who blesses the gathere people and with a big flame illuminates them. The speech, this particular and important richness.