The Christmas crèche is an historic Italian holiday tradition and Naples is ground zero for miniature mangers, Mary's and tiny Kings.
By CINDA CHAVICH
One of the most famous Italian Christmas market is in Naples in Via San Gregorio Armeno, with its endless shops dedicated to the Christmas Nativity. One of the most famous Italian Christmas market is in Naples in Via San Gregorio Armeno, with its endless shops dedicated to the Christmas Nativity.
The artisans along Via San Gregorio Armeno in Naples — a.k.a. Christmas Alley — are busy creating Neapolitan nativity scenes year round, but tonight the narrow cobbled streets are bustling with buyers.
We’re literally swept involuntarily along in the dense crowd, past little shops burgeoning with miniature Mary’s and mangers, little Wise Men and the requisite tiny farm animals, all handcrafted from wax, wood and clay. Alongside, there are shops filled with seasonal sweets, boxes of candied chestnuts, colourful cassata cakes topped with glistening fruits, and all manner of holiday baking, from bulbous Panettone breads and almond cookies to marzipan.
From the traditional to the tacky (think fuzzy Santas climbing ropes or riding Vespas), it’s all here, along with glittering characters outlined in lights, suspended high above the winding streets of old Napoli.
CELEBRATING THE SEASON
For Italians Christmas is a time for both faith and indulgence, and they know how to celebrate the season.
Many towns have Christmas markets and there is a crèche in every Duomo (cathedral), but in Naples the miniature Christmas crèche is a centuries old tradition. And the artisans here have perfected the craft of creating detailed figurines in miniature, whether you’re shopping for a one of the Three Kings or a shepherd with his flock.
Every home has a nativity scene or presepe on display – it’s the Italian equivalent to our tabletop Christmas village collections. A crèche can be a simple eight-piece “set” in a stable, or grow into an historic street scene or sprawling mountainside town, all made of cardboard or carved in cork, and topped with the manger set in a cave or grotto, along with a full cast of village characters.
Locals crowd into the shops, searching for figurines to add to their elaborate nativity
narratives, the Neapolitan-style supporting cast which often includes a sleeping shepherd, a gypsy virgin, a prostitute and a monk, among others.
We stop to compare the wide selection of holy infants on offer, laid out next to little livestock, and a variety of scale model villagers, some hoisting jugs of wine, selling fish or hauling carts of mini-vegetables to market.
From hand-painted terra cotta to imported plastic, this has been the place to buy your nativity scene stuff since the late 1700s, when the King of Naples commissioned his own miniature milieu (including both the crèche and a cadre of little everyday people going about their village business). Today you can add extra whisky barrels, electrified street lamps, baskets of bread and fruit — even masked Pulcinella clowns or figures of the Pope and the latest president — to keep your presepe current.
Sicily is home to centuries of crèche art, too — medieval artists working in wax, terracotta and even coral — who also depict peasant and pastoral life in their figurines.
NATIVITY IN SICILY
But it is in Custonaci, near Trapani, where the nativity literally comes to life during the holiday season.
We’re too early to see the spectacle but our guide
takes us into the Grotto Mangiapane, a
deep cleft in a rocky slope, where the hot sun doesn’t penetrate. The cave’s entrance is lined with ancient stone houses, carved right into the rock, and the high roof is blackened with soot, evidence of centuries of habitation.
Today this abandoned village, dating to 900 AD, is a living museum, where 160 costumed actors, artisans and craftsmen bring traditional trades to life and create a living crèche every year from Dec. 25 to January 6.
Christmas traditions are important in nearby Erice, too, an historic village perched on the edge of a steep cliff, high above the plains below. Erice is known for its Christmas market, the Mercatino di Natale in Piazza Umberto, but we are here for the traditional dolce (sweets), once sold only by the local nuns from their cloistered mountain convent.
Maria Grammatico, the town’s most famous pastry chef, grew up the orphanage at that convent and learned the nuns’ baking skills well — her little Pasticceria, filled with the seasonal colors of candied cherries and citron in torrone (nougat), Sicilian cassata, cannoli and other holiday treats, is a mecca for food lovers.
After we browse through the shop, we meet Grammatico in her commercial kitchen for a hands-on pastry class, and learn the art of rolling almond paste into perfect little sugar-coated cookies, something the feisty septuagenarian does with ease, but an art we struggle to perfect.
Our trek along the Sicilian coast uncovers more holiday preparations, too. There are almond cookies scented with oranges and crunchy almond brittles created in the kitchen at Da Vittorio, the cosy seaside guesthouse and restaurant where we stay near Menfi. And we find terracotta figurines for the crèche in the shops of Trapani and Marsala, too.
While Italian sculptors have been creating miniature nativity scenes for more than 800 years, it was St. Francis of Assisi who created the first living crèche in a cave in the hill town of Greccio, for Christmas Eve mass in 1223.
Along with almond cookies, marzipan fruits, candied citron and limoncello, its just another way that Italian families celebrate the season.
MORE CHRISTMAS CRECHES TO SEE:
NAPLES: Wander though the artisan workshops along San Gregorio Armeno in the middle of old Naples, then visit the Museo Nazionale di San Martino to see the collection of 18th century figurines, Il Presepe Cuciniello.
TRAPANI: Find nativity scenes created in coral and embellished with gold, silver, enamel and precious stones at the regional museum, Conte Agostino Pepoli, housed in a former Carmelite convent.
ROME: See some of the first sculpted nativity figures created by artist Arnolfo di Cambio in 1288 are held in the crypt of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.
©CindaChavich
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