I just walked through the center of Rome and noticed that the shops are all open even though it's Christmas Day!! I remember noticing this last year too.

The whole of the Termini shopping center is open (every single shop as far as I could tell including Benetton, the luggage shop, the newsagents etc) as well as a lot of the shops in my neighbourhood and the stalls which have been set up at Piazza Vittorio.

I guess they are hoping for last minute shoppers. But this seems weird in an officially Catholic country. Just very commercialised or something and far from the meaning of Christmas. By contrat, when I used to live in New York, even though a large proportion of New Yorkers are not Christian, the whole city was a ghost town in Christmas Day.

Is it the same in other big Italian cities?

Everything was shutdown here. Not a car on the roads. We went to the gym on base to work out- even it was empty!

Even our "Mercatino di Natale" was closed on Christmas day!! That surprised some folks who had come into town to attend.

Florence was a mix, restaurants were open and some cafes and ice-cream places. Tours were going on and the Tour Friday bus was running. Every now and then a small shop selling clothes or jewellery would be open but none of the big chains.

The guys selling fakes were out in force and doing a roaring trade!

How warm was it everywhere else? I was really suprised at how warm it was - the chill had gone from the air and the kids had a great time playing at the playground. It was very spring-like (as in late UK that is!)

It was cool but sunny with no wind. The girls soccer team at the base were practicing in shorts and short sleeves. Quite unusual for late December here.

About ten degrees warmer than last Christmas here.

In my 300 inhabitant village, the grocery and tabacchi stores were open Christmas morning until noon; everything is closed today. Many people milling about all day yesterday, including lots of kids, as many come up here to visit/eat with the older relatives

We had probably our coldest day so far yesterday, but no rain for the first time in about 2 weeks. No sun either, but it was still a pretty nice day.

I guess one key word is "officially Catholic" (beware, though, that although most Itlaian politicians seem to behve otherwise, italy does not have an official religion, and is, at least in name, a laical country). As I repeat quite often, the church considers over the 90% of Italians to be cathlic but that includes all of the baptized, regarless of their actual religious faith or lack of thereof (I have many firneds that are considered catholic by the church but who are buddist, atheist, agnostic, protestants etc.), about 85% of the Italians claim to be catholic, only about 70% of these ever goes to church and takes part to the liturgy (marriages, funerals and baptisms not included), about only half of those who go to church at least on occasion go to church regularly at least a couple of times per month and have regularly sacraments. And even amongst those who go regularly to church, onòly a minority follows all of the catholic rules about moral, be it private (mainly sexual) or public.

i don't know about being open on christmas day, here was the opposite.
in australia the shops all have extended opening hours in the lead up to christmas, as did the shops here, which i assumed meant orario continuato.

but when i went into the centre 2 days before christmas at 2:30pm everything was closed and there was hardly anyone around, of course they came out at 3:30 like normal. but i couldn't believe. would never happen like that in australia

The siesta is observed regardless.