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Memories and Holidays : The Presepio

Everyone who celebrates Christmas has Christmas memories.  Mine go back more than 40 years and are nearly all memories in Rome. And most of them involve the presepio.

Unwrapping the presepio returns me to being little, with the presepio world before me.

A few year ago, Nathan and the work-in-progress presepio
A few year ago, Nathan and the work-in-progress presepio
Our family has been collecting the presepio, or Christmas creche, since the 1920s.  Almost all of our figures are from Rome’s Piazza Navona, where at Christmas time, presepio figures have been on sale since at least the 19th century.  Our family bought presepio figures from the same family for thirty years.
Buying presepio figures in 1967 at Rome's Piazza Navona
Buying presepio figures with my family in 1967 at Rome’s Piazza Navona
Our presepio has around 100 figures, all around four inches tall and handmade in Naples or around Rome.  The oldest figures are about 90 years old, the most recent are my acquisitions of two yeas ago made by an artisan in the Naples superb of Barra.  Biblical protagonists are here…

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but are not the main focus : mostly we have market vendors, trades people, musicians..
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peasants and members of high society all going about their daily business.   Card players. 
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Fishermen and washerwomen and fishmongers.
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Since Naples was in the 18th century — when the presepio concept first developed — a thriving international port, the manger scene also includes an exotic mix of visitors – Africans, Arabs and Orientals – as found in the teaming streets of Naples itself.  Also many animals and accessories including musical instruments, farm and household implements, fruit and vegetables, dishes and pottery, and baskets.

 

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A whole presepio world.  That same world that drew me in as a small child.

When I open the presepio boxes some time every December, first I must build mountains out of encyclopedias and paperback books, and rivers from tinkling foil.  I must make hills for camels and sheep to wander down.

I must shake out the ancient damask that is the floor (much patched, much stained from fountains that dribbled onto it over the decades.)  I must hang the eight angels (made by four different hands, and from 1926 to 2001.)

I check to ensure that the tiny aquarium pumps are still working well on the two-spouted fountain, that the wine-makers cask’s (where the “wine” runs red as it is cranberry juice) and that the bulbs are still operative in the trattoria.

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I must think about presepi of years past — look at some of the illustrations tucked into one box, made by my mother: ”particularly effective this year” penciled on a rough drawing of a presepio set-up she made and especially approved of one year.

Our presepio survived, as did many of those of my mother’s childhood, because someone wrapped each figure, mummy style, in soft paper, swaddling delicate fingers and tiny toes, wings and hoofs, cabbages and fish, in protection, and then wrapped that little bundle in paper towels or newspapers.

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Out come yellowing newspapers of the 1950s and all the way through the present day. Reading headlines and advertising from these years is a wonderful diversion.
Out come a few silver fish.  Out come a few fingers too.  Presepio figures always loose a few appendages during  the stress of wrapping and unwrapping.This year we have a new puppy who would love to join my presepio landscapes.
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And also I set up the presepio far too late, anyway, to be ambitious : rather than sprawling the scene across various pieces of furniture I arrange this year’s presepio on just one long table (the market, the creche scene, the osteria and the puppet theater) while the water scenes and the musicians and shepherd are on a high, ancient dresser.
My son asserts that he will build a little rope ladder to connect the two arenas.  Which is a charming idea, but the presepio figures, I explain, have a fear of heights and would not like to undertake the three feet walk from one table to other.  (Actually, many are already lacking limbs or have had arms, legs, feet or heads glued on once or more : these four inch tall terra cotta figures are delicate.)
Nathan arranges the manger scene
Nathan arranges the manger scene

When my daughter was four she made for Jesus a teddy bear like her own and that was the size of a sheep.  We have that too, but at nine, she will not allow it to come out (‘it is embarrassing” she says to me this evening, as she stacks more mozzarella nearly into a minute basket,)

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Some years when I put the figures out I recreate scenarios I have been designing since I was first old enough to help to organize the presepio.  The favorite woman with the green blouse and blue skirt carrying the ricotta always talks to the lady with the polca-dotted head scarf.
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As I put the two down together, they recommence the conversation they have carried on for decades, and surely not as if a year has past.  They talk about food, and they complain about how heavy the ricotta is that they have to carry.
The puppet theater always presents the same show, the same Pulcinella (Punch and Judy) I first saw on the Rome’s Janiciulum Hill when I was three, and which plays in a happy continuous rerun in our presepio year after year after year.
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I miniature myself.
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I am one of the several priests with the red umbrellas or red bible and I am speaking to another two priests with a red umbrella about the weather.
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I am the old lady carrying the pigeons, and the tiny mussels in the blue platter are just the right size for me to purchase. I might take them to Jesus or I might not.  I might spend the day just speaking to my so-familiar friends in the market and keep away from the butcher, whom i have never liked (he cheated me once in 1971.)
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I arrange a tiny carcass of beef among the pile up of presents at Jesus’ feet.
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This gives me the same enjoyable shiver of disgust I suspect I felt when I first was allowed to help with the presepio, and arrange the tiny gifts. There is a mound of presents strewn round the baby’s crib — pizza, oranges, fish, garlic, tomatoes, and everything else a Neapolitan would think to bring as a heartfelt gift.

An aunt I loved died this autumn. Her adored presepio figures, collected in Rome by my uncle when I was a little girl, bring 16 new people to this year’s presepio.  It is very good to have two egg sellers, one in a yellow frock and another in a blue one, both with delicate fingers holding up a small perfect egg that they hope a presepio passerby will purchase.

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At last there is a dog, a new arrival, a wooly rustic one, whom the children have placed up among the hams and salamis.
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It adds to the conviviality of the osteria to have four more merry-makers playing cards and helping themselves to the tiny carafe of red wine.
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Some of the cardinal figures — Jesus, Mary and Joseph — are allowed out only every second year as they have doubles — those from my mother’s childhood, in the 1920s and 30s, and from my own, in the ’60s,  This year we decided to put in four kings — two old ones, two from the 1960s.

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The camels are a mix of old and new.

My other aunt visited last week.  She has been setting up presepi — including some of the same figures that were here — for more than 80 years.

It filled my heart with the sweet, comforting warmth of continuity to watch her with my children puttering away among the market figures, intent on arranging a scene that she too has been playing in her head for decades (she has her own similar Neapolitan presepio too.)

 

Aunty Chrissy, who has been setting up presepi for more than 80 years
Aunty Chrissy, who has been setting up presepi for more than 80 years

“You really need to enter into it and think what would be realistic”, she reminds me, as she unwraps from an ageless tissue paper a tiny hammer and places it in the hands of the coppersmith.

She moves him a bit away from the cobbler.

“Too much noise to have them working so closely together”.

When the presepio is put away — tradition says on February 2 though we sometime put it away sooner or later — a little piece of me disappears into the presepio boxes.

There is not much I love more than the presepio, which in its high level of artisanship, its celebration of markets and family and food and socialization — encompasses most of the Italian features I hold most dear.  I will think about it for the rest of the year, considering modifications (or not) for the scene on the following Christmas, and keep an eye out for the odd tiny object — one never know where things may pop up — that might make a good addition.  Like two bunches of Puglia wild oregano which this year are perfect umbrella pines.

What will next year bring to the ongoing and quite magic world of presepio ?

Tanti auguri

Marjorie

 

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Marjorie’s Italy Blog comes to you from Italy and is a regular feature written for curious, independent Italy lovers. It is enjoyed both by current travelers and armchair adventurers.