Presepe and croccante, Christmas in Rome

The painted turn of the century merry-go-round or Bernini’s Four Rivers fountain? Dodge the man on stilts or drop a coin in the hat by the flame eater juggling torches across the street from the Brazilian Embassy? Get a chocolate tartufo at Tre Scalini first, or stroll past the shooting gallery?

Every year, come Christmas, I never know where to start in Piazza Navona. Fifty-odd stalls of every kind line the piazza’s perimeter. The aroma of caramel burning from the croccante vendor is intoxicating. The typical holiday season hard, caramelized slab with mixed almonds and hazelnuts, made by spreading the candy out onto a cold greased work surface and cutting it before it hardens with a huge knife, leaves the unchanging flavor of Natale stuck to my teeth.

Santa Claus–whose name here is Babbo Natale–and the Befana (an old woman who brings gifts on January 6th–the Epiphany–aboard her flying broom) sit side by side on a stuffed reindeer-drawn carriage and children drop letters in their lap.

I rush over to the kind old man that sells nativity scene statuettes. He recognizes me every year when I pass his stall, or perhaps he is just very polite. My son picks out his shepherd, and we get sucked back into the vortex of lights, laughter, cotton candy and Christmas spirit.

Il presepe is a miniature Bethlehem. December 8th is crèche construction day here in Italy.

The Christmas tree is a late addition to Italian seasonal celebrations. The home built nativity scene with flour dusted brown paper bags as mountains, a pocket mirror as a duck pond and pin holes punched in blue cardboard for a starry sky above the cork covered manger was my thing as a child. It got built early on and taken down the day after Befana. Only recently, fueled by my son’s natural and bubbling Christmas spirit, have I begun constructing a Nativity again. Many parts of it are edible.

The first thing to do is collect the moss, which will carpet the model Bethlehem village flooring. We usually take a nice hike up by the Bracciano Lake or the Manziana forest in the outskirts of Rome on the weekend, and return home with a little patches of green velvet, and high on clean, crisp winter oxygen.

The next step is elevation. The construction needs to be visible and not get tripped into during festive dancing or galloping around the house. We raise our presepe on an old, chipped dessert trolley, which we keep in the cellar and wheel out annually for the occasion.

We then proceed to lighting, this is the trickiest part, since it needs to be well planned. Each little house and strategic site needs a light, so untangling Christmas lights and arranging them accordingly is very important.

We then build mountains, hills, a riverbed and whatever our fantasy landscape requires. The mountains are brown paper bags, the hills get covered with our precious moss, the stream is a strip of neatly cut aluminum foil. We scatter the little houses in increasing size, the little ones in the back, and the larger ones in the foreground, for optimum perspective, ending with a prominent manger. Cork lines the rooftops, while flour, styrofoam and cotton wool act as snow.

Then the village starts to populate with a variety of characters, each picked carefully and placed in a strategic position. There have been books written on how to build the presepe, and each character statuette has a meaning and a purpose. The Holy family of course, is the starring cast. You must leave the straw filled manger empty of course until Christmas Eve, until the Babe’s birth; include the fishmonger in her turn of the century costume, holding up her basket of symbolic fish; the chestnut seller, with a light shining through his little stove reproducing the embers; the shepherds and their flocks of sheep represent the believers gathered for the miraculous birth; the steer and the donkey and a few scattered chickens, geese, palm trees, the comet over the cave and a duck pond turn our Nativity into a festive mixture of Israel, early 1900 Napoli and a snowy Alpine location.