The manger

Christmas has passed. Christmas and Boxing Day. These two holidays in our country carry a special weight of family, tenderness, and often a touch of the mundane. Now, the Christmas festivities have become commercialized, contaminated with foreign traditions. We have decorated fir trees, gifts under the tree, we have Santa Clauses and reindeer and sleighs, we have sweaters embroidered with all this colorful imagery. Our nougat is now joined by the ubiquitous panettone., Someone on the radio the other day was already looking for a Catalan translation. One person suggested panettone; another, even, panotReferring to the tiles that pave the sidewalks of Barcelona. I would leave it in Italian, so we're not mistaken about its origin. Our prickly holly—our forbidden holly—has also been replaced by Mexican poinsettias, or Christmas flowers, as they call them, cultivated in enormous greenhouses. And moss is protected too. You can no longer go to the forest to collect it. I bought some from a florist, and she told me it came from Soria. Without moss, how will we make the nativity scene? Perhaps I should say: how will they make it? Perhaps they won't make it anymore. Traditions develop little by little. And they end quickly. Or perhaps they are slowly lost. I don't know. The fact is that I still made a nativity scene this year, smaller than in other years, but with everything it should have.

There's the manger, of course, with the ox and the donkey, to warm the little feet—knots, knots—of the Child, who is the protagonist of the celebration. Saint Joseph, quite perplexed, and Mary, the Virgin Mary, keep watch over him. Above the manger, we've placed the angel, the one who sings the hallelujah. And next to him, we always put an owl, for that mental connection with Athena. Especially this year, so that not everything is Jewish. We also put a small crocodile by the pond where the woman is washing. And along the path, following the shepherds' procession, we always place a pair that might surprise some: a tiger and a sheep. But it's a subtle homage to Isaiah (11). A wink. Also, at the Child's feet, we put a rug with a Persian design, a useful gift, because not everything has to be gold, frankincense, and myrrh. With the gold, I suppose Saint Joseph was able to set up the carpentry workshop in Nazareth. But what did they do with the frankincense and myrrh? I don't know. There's also the caganer, that figure so theologically laden with meaning. If the Child has become man, it means he has acquired our humiliating human condition. And humans are related to beasts, with all that implies: to go hungry, to eat, and to defecate. A nativity scene without a caganer is a nativity scene lacking that profound sense of what it means to become human.

Our nativity scene is small, compact, but it's here, in a corner of the living room, and we always keep a candle lit, symbolizing our presence in this small, tender world where we wouldn't be afraid to get lost. The perfection of this somewhat rustic, ancestral scene contrasts sharply with the madness of our world, full of wars, betrayals, hunger, and disease! Corruption and decay. All for power, all for money. Men, women, and children fleeing their homes, some because they are driven out, others because they want to live like us Westerners, with our comfort, our security, our opportunities. They come from everywhere, confident, full of courage. They risk their lives to achieve that ideal. And they don't know what awaits them. Pain, hunger, cold, and the shock of a cultural shift, a change in customs. They are dazzled by our screens, by our advertisements full of luxury and easy living. They don't know that there is misery here too, that here too, even though bombs don't fall, even though drones don't stalk us night and day, many are homeless, hungry, cold, and have no future…

The cities of Ukraine, destroyed; the Gaza Strip, razed. This should be our nativity scene this year, and I fear for many years to come. Ruins and devastation caused by human folly. By the lust for power, by the thirst for revenge.

But I defend our humble nativity scene, which comes from so far away, from that poor little man of Assisi who, they say, gave everything for others. I defend the identity of those who have distorted it for centuries. Let them come from all over the world, let the Child of our nativity scene welcome them with open arms, and let us welcome them too. But without losing our idiosyncrasies, what has made us who we are. Let them learn how to make a nativity scene.