The patron of Alessandria del Carretto is Saint Alexander, pope and martyr, celebrated on the last Sunday of April and on 3 May with the Festa della Pitë (the Fir), to whom the Chiesa di Sant'Alessandro Papa Martire is dedicated.
Oral tradition says the festival began in the 17th century, when a woodcutter, having felled a white fir, found inside the trunk the image of Saint Alexander, pope and martyr, who died by beheading. Since then the community dedicates a white fir to the saint every year: it is ritually split into two parts, the trunk and the top, carried by hand into the town, where they are put back together and raised, climbed and felled again, like a kind of greased pole; the festival lasts about a month and its phases take place on different days.
