Miracolo translates directly to "miracle". It's a beautiful and evocative word that carries a sense of wonder and hope, especially fitting for a Christmas song.
In the lyrics, Elisa sings, "Ma diventa grande che sembra un miracolo" (But it grows so big it seems like a miracle). She uses this word to describe how something small and perhaps hidden can grow into something profound and extraordinary, much like the magic associated with the holiday season.
"Buon Natale Anche a Te" ("Merry Christmas to You Too") is Elisa's quieter, more honest side of the holidays. Instead of a picture-perfect Christmas, she sings about the small sadnesses people carry through the season: someone rushing to catch a late train before everything closes, a hidden story tucked away like something kept at the bottom of a pocket.
The song doesn't try to fix that sadness, it just sits with it. She still says "Merry Christmas to you too," and compares the moment to the snow of '93, as if even a small gesture, a voice on the phone, can matter when it's all two people have.
By the end, the wish turns inward: she says Merry Christmas to herself too, thinking of a father who isn't there. It's less about celebration and more about holding love and loss in the same breath, and letting neither cancel out the other.
Elisa, born Elisa Toffoli in 1977 in Trieste in northeastern Italy, is one of the country's most acclaimed singer-songwriters. She grew up in the border town of Monfalcone, in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, where hearing many languages early on shaped her rare gift for singing across them.
She debuted in 1997 with the album Pipes & Flowers and, unusually for an Italian artist, built her early career writing and singing mostly in English. Her breakthrough came in 2001, when she won the Sanremo Music Festival with "Luce (Tramonti a nord est)", her first song in Italian, co-written with Zucchero. The song became her first number one at home and remains one of the most beloved Italian pop ballads of its era.