Add a date box on the side of posts

make sure to work with a child theme of Twenty Eleven:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Child_Themes

there is something to start with:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/how-to-add-twenty-eleven-post-date-images?replies=1

Ok, I followed that tutorial. I have 2 questions:

A. why the date displayed is always “Jan 01”?

B. Once fixed point A, how can I change date format from English to Italian?

OK for point B I modified functions.php as follows

if ( ! function_exists( 'raindrops_posted_date' ) ) :
function raindrops_posted_date() {
?>
<h2 class="title-date"><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php printf( esc_attr__( 'Permalink to %s', 'twentyeleven' ), the_title_attribute( 'echo=0' ) ); ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<?php
global $post;
$day = date( 'd',strtotime( esc_html( get_the_date() ) ) );
$month = date( 'M',strtotime( esc_html( get_the_date() )) );

		switch ($month) {
		    case 'Jan':
		        $month = 'Gen';
		        break;
                /* and so on ... */
		}

?>
<div class="post-date">
<span class="post-month"><?php echo $month; ?></span>
<span class="post-day"><?php echo $day; ?></span>
</div>
<?php
}
endif;

but I can’t understand why every post is tagged by January, 1st…

try to change those lines:

$day = date( 'd',strtotime( esc_html( get_the_date() ) ) );
$month = date( 'M',strtotime( esc_html( get_the_date() )) );

to:

$day = get_the_date( 'd' );
$month = get_the_date( 'M' );

(untested, as the original code was working in my test)

OK perfetct now it works!

Another question on functions.php. The second function of that code can be omitted? The code is:

if (!function_exists( 'twentyeleven_posted_on' ) ) :
/**
 * Create our own twentyeleven_posted_on to override parent function in our child theme
 */
function twentyeleven_posted_on() {
	printf( __('<span class="by-author"> <span class="sep">Posted by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a href="%1$s" title="%2$s" rel="author">%3$s</a></span></span>', 'twentyeleven' ),
		esc_url( get_author_posts_url( get_the_author_meta( 'ID' ) ) ),
		esc_attr( sprintf( __( 'View all posts by %s', 'twentyeleven' ), get_the_author() ) ),
		get_the_author()
	);
}
endif;

If I omit

twentyeleven_posted_on

functions, the child theme inherits the posted_on properties of Twenty Eleven. Can I omit this portion of code without any problem?

thanks