From the WSJ Opinion Archives
HOUSES OF WORSHIP
Away in a Manger
Italy's crèches reveal the sensual side of Christmas.
ROME--No conflict better sums up America's "Christmas wars" than the debate over crèches in the public square. Christian traditionalists view manger scenes as reminders of the holiday's religious meaning; while enthusiasts for church-and-state separation would exclude them for the same reason. It seems obvious to both sides that devotional statues send a radically different message than, for example, effigies of Santa and his reindeer. Yet in the land where the tradition of nativity scenes got its start and still thrives today, such distinctions are not so clear. In Italy, many of these venerable displays represent an idea of Christmas that embraces both sacred and profane to a degree that Americans might find startling.
It was St. Francis of Assisi who first taught lay people to set up nativity scenes, till then an exclusively liturgical custom, in the 13th century. Jesuit priests cultivated and encouraged the practice during the Counter-Reformation, as an aid to Catholic piety in the face of iconoclastic Protestantism. The craft reached its acme in 18th-century Naples, which produced what remains the emblematic type of Italian crèche: an extravaganza featuring dozens of carved figures, vividly painted and dressed in sumptuous fabrics, set in elaborate architectural settings and a naturalistic landscape. (Naples remains the world's premier marketplace for crèche figurines and decorations--they are sold by hundreds of vendors along the Via San Gregorio Armeno.)
At this time of year, almost all of Italy's homes and churches are decorated with nativity scenes. The most prominent example, over 12 feet tall and populated by life-size statues, stands in the middle of St. Peter's Square. Elsewhere in Rome, the world's oldest extant crèche (by the 13th-century sculptor and architect Arnolfo di Cambio) is back on display after extensive restoration at the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. On the Piazza del Popolo, a show of 100 crèches from around the world offers a range of interpretations by master craftsmen and amateurs, including a phantasmagoric moonscape made by local psychiatric patients, with astronauts, a volcano and a flying pterodactyl.
One of the most remarkable nativity scenes on view this year in Christendom's historic center sits inside the 16th-century basilica of San Giacomo in Augusta. Over 20 feet long and eight feet tall at its peak, it is work of the Scuottos, a family of Neapolitan artisans, and at first glance seems a faithful representation of their city's great crèche-making tradition, down to the convention of ruined ancient columns framing the group around the manger.
Soon, however, the observer is struck by incongruous details. Two thugs under an archway threaten each other with knives. A well-dressed man lies on the ground, his grimace and contorted hands suggesting that he has been beaten. Lepers with disintegrating faces like characters in a horror movie peer out from their caves. A row of black men and women, their beautiful physiques totally unclothed, stand in chains under the guard of what appears to be a Roman soldier. Through the half-shuttered windows of an upper-room, we glimpse a curvaceous young woman standing naked in a bath tub.
The Scuottos claim merely to have revealed characters and scenes that were implicit in the ambiance of traditional Neapolitan crèches, but suppressed by earlier standards of propriety. And one effect of their innovations, after the viewer gets over his shock, is to highlight the sensuality of the strictly conventional elements: the abundance of food and wine; a merry trio of musicians on a rooftop, among them a dancing woman with castanets; the finely embroidered vestments that clothe the magi and even the holy family itself. A Neapolitan nativity scene with all the trimmings is as potent an incitement to material indulgence as any shop window on Madison Avenue.
Surely, one thinks, this cannot be what Pope Benedict had in mind earlier this month, when he blessed the custom of nativity scenes as an antidote to the "commercial contamination" of Christmas and a symbol of the "humbleness and charitable goodness of Christ." The child lying in the manger is by far the least visually interesting part of this crèche, as of so many others by Italian hands. Christmas's stubbornly residual pagan element, which inspired the Pilgrims of Massachusetts Bay Colony to ban the feast, seems especially flagrant here.
And yet, disturbing as all this sensuality may be to the Puritan who dwells inside every American (even one, like this writer, who was born and raised a Roman Catholic), the context lends it an authentically Christian meaning. The gospels teach that the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. He even dined with publicans and sinners. And Christmas has never been about just straw and swaddling clothes; it is also about gold, frankincense and myrrh. In their celebration of the carnal under the rubric of the redeemer's birth, Italy's spectacular crèches reflect the mystery of the incarnation.
Mr. Rocca is co-author, with Rockwell A. Schnabel, of "The Next Superpower?" (Rowman & Littlefield).
