“Ten lords a-leaping”

Even though most of us are back at work and it feels like life as usual, today is only the tenth day of Christmas, which continues for twelve days from 25 December, ending on the 6th of January, Epiphany, when the Magi arrived at the stable to shower the Baby Jesus with gifts. Here in Italy presepi, reconstructions of nativity scenes, are still on display. As I went to see them in tiny villages and small towns, I thought of the community spirit and individual skills needed to produce these complicated constructions.

Presepe on an island, Bagni di Lucca

The Media Valle del Serchio (just north of Lucca and including Bagni di Lucca) is renowned for its gesso (plaster of Paris) figurines, many of which were cast to be used in presepi. Presepi come in all shapes and sizes. Many are in churches or church halls and show the artist’s conception of every day life in Bethlehem, like this one in the church at Pieve Fosciana in the Garfagnana.

Doing the laundry

Chopping firewood

A very small loaf...

...but very large pots

I think there's something wrong with this knitting pattern

Fish for dinner

The Romans in their luxurious palace keeping tabs on the people below

A star to guide us

At first, I was enjoying the treasure hunt too much to take photos and missed the one in the chimney pot, but here are some others.

A cosy stall with chickens pecking at the door

A week or two before the birth

Above the pregnant Mary, an eerie moonlit snowy scene

An angel points the way

School children have created a presepe from dried corn husks

The three kings follow the star leading a camel with one too many humps.

Joseph looks worried

A concert

A water mill

The Magi have arrived

Sometimes a whole village is turned into a presepe vivente, a living presepe, where attic’s are ransacked for pre-war clothing, children write on slates in candlelit schoolrooms, woman sit on rush chairs doing their tatting, wine is mulled over a fire in the street and at midnight real parents bring their infant, usually dressed in Baby Gap jeans, to the manger at the base of the fort at the top of the village.
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The most inventive presepi are the miniature ones in the church hall at Pieve Fosciana. Several have moving parts, most include music and one of the Annunciation shows the angel Gabriel magically appearing and disappearing, which I totally failed to capture in a photo.

A miniature nativity scene

This one resembles Cinderella and the wicked stepmother

A stall with rather grand columns

Here's one in a tree trunk

And one in a light bulb

The prize for the kitschiest must be this one in a piazza in Lucca.

If you’re hungry for more photos of presepi, I recommend Debra Kolkka’s photos of the famous ones in Naples.