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    WINTER
    2022

     

    The sweet magic of Christmas

    "Of all the winter magic, Christmas is the sweetest; and that eager joy which lights up the eyes of children begins a long time before; when the city prepares for the party and lights up; when walking down the street, bagpipes are heard; when the mother takes a certain box from the closet, she opens it and says: "we need some new pendants for the tree!" But Christmas is heard above all at school, in the music and songs of the children, in the drawings full of snow, in the painted glass; and everyday work seems more pleasant, lighter. Everyone has a new idea to celebrate Christmas, to decorate the classroom; the teachers sometimes have an air of mystery ... will they be preparing a surprise? And if we are lucky enough to even have a sprinkle of snow, happiness is complete. And the colder it is outside, the more inside we feel the warmth that comes from being together, from the sweetness and enchantment of this party ". (Naldi) 
    Every city and every region, in this period, tells its traditions and enchants us with its magic.

    In an area of ​​about 50km, in the Pisan territory, we can go to the discovery of real art and craft treasures as well as representations involving hundreds of figures and entire communities. From the animated nativity scene of Calci, set up in the Natural History Museum next to the splendid Certosa, to the nativity that grows, because it adds new characters every year, in the church of Nicosia, to that carved by hand from olive logs, called dell'Angelo for the name of its artist Angelo Perini in San Giovanni alla Vena. Without forgetting the numerous living nativity scenes, a solemn event in which several, if not all, the inhabitants of different villages such as Castelfranco di Sotto, San Miniato, and Casciana Terme often participate. 
    At the Romanesque Basilica of San Piero a Grado, between Pisa and the mouth of the Arno, where legend tells that San Piero landed on his journey from Palestine to Rome. The living nativity scene is held on 24 December at 8.30 pm and on 26 December at 5.30 pm in the area adjacent to the magnificent Romanesque Basilica, and is made up of 200 figures. At the entrance, you are greeted by the customs office in Bethlehem where visitors are registered and can leave a sign of their entry by changing money that will be used to buy products in the reconstructed craft shops. 
    In Montione, between Pisa and Cascina, at the Badia di San Savino the living nativity scene takes place on the afternoon of January 5th starting at 3.30 pm. Over 100 figures are committed to retracing the Nativity of Christ, from the census of Herod to the arrival of the Magi, re-proposing the life of the town with markets and ancient crafts. 
    On December 26th and January 6th, in San Miniato Basso, over 300 participants propose one of the most engaging living nativity scenes in Tuscany, which, crossing the streets of the town and touching its main artistic emergencies, gives life to the scenes of waiting and the birth of Jesus. 

    In Sicily, the Christmas atmosphere begins on December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, when the typical decorations of this festival are mounted in all the houses and people begin to gather around a table to eat their fill with friends and relatives. 
    Although the Christmas tree complete with sparkling lights and attached gifts has now taken over in all homes, many remain faithful to the nativity scene, the true protagonist of this festival. Here too, entire villages are transformed into live nativity scenes, where the inhabitants, between the sound of the bagpipes and the songs of the Novenas, often commissioned by private clients and performed inside their homes near the nativity scene, dress up in ancient clothes and stage old jobs. In most cases, they are representations of ancient Sicilian crafts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many of which seem to be lost. 
    Among the most beautiful we remember the living nativity scene of Custonaci, in the province of Trapani, perhaps the oldest on the island, which takes place right around a natural cave facing the sea; the living nativity scene of Gangi, in the province of Palermo which instead tries to reconstruct the atmosphere of ancient Palestine at the time of the birth of Christ; the Verghiano living nativity scene, which takes place in Vizzini, in the province of Catania. 
    Alongside the living nativity scenes, the tradition then unfolds in many artistic nativity scenes. 
    In ancient times the Santari and Pasturari modeled and colored the figures of the Nativity, they made the "Bambinelli", exploiting the very ductile wax and the Scaffarate, that is the representation of the Nativity, placed on a glass showcase, exhibited during the whole Christmas period and jealously preserved during the rest of the year. In Caltagirone we find nativity scenes made first of clay, then of ceramic, so beautiful that over the centuries, this popular art has become an artisan activity. In Catania there is a nativity scene whose characters are made with a particular tablet and coated with resinous paint. It is the eighteenth-century one owned by Baron Scammacca. Another suggestive example of the Nativity is represented by that one of eighteenth-century, presented in Acireale (in the province of Catania) consisting of about thirty life-size characters located inside a lava cave.

    Credits to Montepisanotravel.it e Siciliafan.it

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