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THIS NATIVITY SCENE by Alfredo Rodriguez of San Antonio is on display in Washington, D.C., in an exhibit called "Joy to the World: Nativities from the James and Emilia Govan Collection."
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AWAY IN A MANGER:
Nativities tell the story
___By Ted Parks
___Religion News Service
___WASHINGTON (RNS)--Christians believe Jesus came to Earth as a baby. And in some places this season, he comes in black, white, brown, bronze--even with a CD for a halo.
___These special places are nativity exhibits, sometimes called "creches," from the French, or "presepios," from the Italian. In these multicultural, often miniaturized celebrations of the doctrine of the Incarnation, Jesus takes form not in flesh, but wood, ivory, porcelain and a multitude of other earthly materials.
___While many families across the nations use nativity sets as part of their traditional Christmas decorations, individual collectors sometimes amass hundreds of the small re
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A NATIVITY scene made up of common office supplies is on display in Camarillo, Calif.
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productions of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the wise men, the shepherds and other creatures forming the cast at the first Christmas.
___In the spirit of the season, some collectors share their nativity hoards by putting them on public display.
___James Govan, who owns more than 300 creche sets, has lent about 40 of his sets for a special exhibit at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington.
___Govan is president of "Friends of the Creche," a group of American nativity collectors organized in August 2000. With between 300 and 375 members, the American organization is considering joining the Universalis Foederatio Praesepistica (General Creche Federation), an international group founded in 1952.
___The Govan group of nativities shows the multicultural scope of creche displays. His, for example, come from about 80 countries. In addition to purchasing pieces already complete, Govan has commissioned custom creches. which demonstrate the way modern artisans interpret the ancient Christmas story in light of their own culture.
___One nativity Govan singled out reflects Hispanic tradition. After becoming acquainted with the woodcarving of Alfredo Rodriguez, Govan requested that the San Antonio craftsman apply his skills to the creche.
___A firefighter by trade, Rodriguez sent Govan the custom-made nativity in two stages, with the holy family arriving one year, the wise men the next. With red adorning the wise men as well as Joseph and Mary, the set includes a rooster highlighted with a red beak and comb. In the Spanish-speaking world, Christmas Eve midnight service is the "Misa del gallo," the "cock's crow mass."
___Making the Christmas story speak the cultural idiom of believers in their time and place is at the heart of the nativity tradition.
___While motifs from the story of Jesus' birth adorned Christian burial places early in the church's history, experts link the development of the nativity scene directly to Francis of Assisi, who persuaded medieval Italian peasants to play Joseph, Mary and the others to make the Christmas story come alive.
___"What he was trying to do was to make the Christmas story real and tangible and meaningful," said Lori Amos, volunteer curator of "Good Tidings of Great Joy," an annual creche exhibit at the National Cathedral in Washington.
___Historians of the creche trace the first three-dimensional nativities back to late 13th century Italy, when sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio created figures for the Santa Maria Maggiore church in Rome, Govan said.
___Naples, Italy, subsequently played a key role in the development of the nativity scene. "It was in Naples that the art of the creche as we know it first flourished," writes
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THE WASHINGTON, D.C., display features this nativity scene, made from a gourd
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historian Matthew Powell in his book, "The Christmas Creche." Besides adorning churches, creches first appeared in private homes in Naples as well, Powell said.
___According to Govan, nativities began to appear more regularly in people's homes in the 18th century.
___Like the exhibit at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, the show at the National Cathedral builds on the passion of an individual collector, cathedral docent Beulah Sommer. Now in its 11th year, the show usually attracts about 10,000 visitors annually.
___A nativity set that often makes visitors "stop in their tracks," Amos said, typifies the richly diverse perspective of the exhibit. From Singapore, the set is made from the interior of the cinnamon tree. In a process similar to making incense, the wood is ground and mixed with water to form a scented paste. The makers of the creche applied the mix to armatures to form its multiple figures, each of which took between two and 15 hours to shape. The set includes the holy family, three magi, and several animals.
___Another striking nativity, carved in Oaxaca, Mexico, is a large piece in the form of a retablo, or altar decoration. The scene features angels, "an immense number" of sheep and only two of the traditionally three wise men. The Christ-child lies on an altar-like box, Amos said, reflecting a Latin American nativity motif that links the infant Jesus with his eventual sacrificial death.
___Some nativities have value not because they come from faraway lands but places deep in the heart. Others attract attention not from their exotic materials, but because, like the Christmas story itself, they wrap the divine in the commonplace.
___Carmela Elsley of Thousand Oaks, Calif., recently displayed a simple three-piece nativity at "No Room at the Inn," an annual creche exhibit near Los Angeles that charges a modest entrance fee, then donates event proceeds to area homeless.
___A card beside Elsley's nativity reads, "Hand made of unglazed clay when I was pregnant with our first child 28 years ago."
___Across the room from Elsley's items and an expensive Armani creche was a nativity made out of ordinary office supplies. CD halos ringed the light-bulb heads of Jesus and his parents, and the babe lay in a manger of crisscrossed yellow wooden pencils holding in recording-tape hay. Looking on was a sheep formed from a coiled telephone cord.
___Judy Crenshaw, one of the organizers of "No Room at the Inn," sees part of the appeal of the California exhibit in its power to unite people around the common story of Christmas.
___"I keep coming back to this sense of connectedness," Crenshaw said. "You can hear people talking to strangers as they view this. It's a way of coming together and just sharing stories and feelings."
___"Everyone comes to it similarly but still differently, in terms of the context of their own beliefs," said Govan. While "many pieces are just simply beautiful works of art to enjoy aesthetically, the point is, it's a portrayal of the human family."
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