"The Rich Poverty ..."

(See Cover)

Up the hill through olive groves, past herds of goat and sheep, come the worshipers on Christmas Eve to the quiet Judean town. Peasants walk to Bethlehem wearing medieval costumes, silk-hatted diplomats swirl into Manger Square in black limousines. And in entering the Church of the Nativity, all bend low to pass through the tiny door called The Needle's Eye.

Inside, Roman Catholic Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Alberto Gori carries an olive-wood Christ child, accompanied by priests and deacons with swinging censers, acolytes and choir boys with long, flickering candles. The procession makes its way down into the Cave of the Nativity beneath the church, and there the figure of the Child is laid on a heap of straw in the place where tradition says the manger stood.

This swaddled image lying in the damp, cramped cavern where Jesus may actually have been born is the center and model of numberless Nativity scenes all over the world. Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox or sectarian, there are creches today almost everywhere there are Christians. There are Nativities as sumptuous as the presepio (manger) in Rome's 11th century Church of Ara Coeli (Altar of Heaven) on Capitoline Hill, with its Christ child--legendarily carved by St. Luke himself--so bedecked with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls and gold that its form is barely discernible and the surplus treasure has to be kept in a safe behind the altar. And there are homemade Nativities like the tiny Krippe (crib) found two years ago by a traveler in the Soviet Zone of Germany--a worn and tired-looking peasant Virgin watched by a tattered Joseph and two miners in blue overalls.

In the Jungle. There are mechanical creches, including that of the local St. Vincent de Paul Society in Beirut, Lebanon, which is 35 ft. by 23 ft., with foot-high Wise Men, shepherds, animals moving in opposite directions against a papier-mache background of Judea. Overhead, the Star of Bethlehem and angels wheel through the sky, real rain falls, water turns a mill wheel, and on a silken coverlet a Christ child (wired for six volts) raises his head and opens his blue eyes.

There are cheap cardboard creches, turned out by the thousands in busy factories, and there are others whose making is a joyful family tradition; one Madrid family lives in an apartment so small that their creche completely fills it; they haul it up to the ceiling and sleep beneath. There are creches in churches, in public squares, even in bars--a notable one is located in the English Bar in Nazareth.

In Northern Laos this Christmas season, 27-year-old Father Lucien Bouchard of Boston is carrying a crude creche on his back over 50. miles, through leech-infested mountains and jungles to a Christian community of opium-growing Meo tribesmen near the Vietnamese frontier. Here he explains "The Coming," in lilting, singsong Meo, to fervent listeners who jingle with silver necklaces, bracelets and anklets as they gaze at the Christ child swaddled in the same black cloth they wear. In Southern Laos, Swiss Calvinist Missionary Lucien Felix has set up homemade creches in nearly 300 palm-hut leper hospitals, which he has built and attended for some 25 years. And in a tiny settlement called Labu on the fringe of the Malay jungle, 20 Stone-Age aborigines worship before an ancient clay figure of the Virgin (tribesmen say it has "always existed") that stares down gently at a plastic Christ child from Japan.

In North Hollywood, Calif, the Christmas display of Emmanuel Lutheran Church is a 200-ft., studio-style set of Bethlehem with a cast of 100-odd who act out a 45-min. taped script which includes, in addition to Mary, Joseph and the Christ child, a visit to Mary's garden, a glance at Herod's pleasure palace, the heralding of angels to the shepherds, and numerous crowd scenes. Teen-agers at Connecticut's Rosemary Hall and 1,000-odd other schools are staging their own versions of the Nativity. And on Boston's Common the city and the downtown stores have set up a $30,000 Christmas show, complete with 12-ft. archangels and dozens of sheep.

Playing v. Praying. Massachusetts' Puritan founding fathers would have been scandalized--not only at the papish Nativity, but at celebrating Christmas at all. Their first New-World Christmas in 1620 was a regular workday for the Pilgrims; the next year, some of the newcomers begged off on the ground that working on Christ's birthday was against their consciences, and caught a tongue-lashing from Governor William Bradford when he found them in the streets playing instead of in their houses praying. In 1659 the Massachusetts Bay Colony ruled that "whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas, or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting or in any other way, shall be fined five shillings."

This was 300 sinful years before the era of the office party, the department-store Santa and all the gimmicked cheer. But over the past half-century, throughout the U.S., there has been a notable turning back to the Christian meaning of the season. This movement of the spirit is not to be gauged by the number of committees organized to Put Christ Back Into Christmas, or by the laudable activities of church councils and Parent-Teacher Associations. It is perhaps better measured in a growing concern, among Protestants as well as Catholics, for the symbols that mean Christmas as the Cross means Easter --the stable with the Virgin, the shepherds, the Wise Men from the East and the child who was the Son of God.

Wise Men & Gifts. Long before the date of Christmas was fixed in the calendar (by Pope Julius I in the middle of the 4th century), the cave or stable in Bethlehem had been an object of veneration. St. Justin Martyr mentioned the present Grotto of the Nativity as early as 155; a century later, Origen discussed the authenticity of the site (even Christianity's enemies, he said, admitted it). The manger scene--with the Wise Men from Matthew and the shepherds from Luke--is one of the oldest Christian traditions. It is also the easiest to dramatize. Canticles of the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries--designed to teach doctrine to an illiterate public as well as to entertain--were the precursors of the medieval miracle plays. Some of the old canticles contain poetry that still has power to evoke the mystery and miracle of Christmas, as for example the 5th century Contacio of St. Romanus of Emesa in which the Wise Men are invited to see for themselves the "rich poverty of the Son of God."

The Gospel does not tell how many Wise Men there were; according to St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine there were twelve, but tradition soon narrowed them to three--presumably because of the three gifts they brought. As far back as the and century, the church assigned symbolical meaning to the gifts: gold for Christ's kingship, frankincense for his priesthood, and healing myrrh for his suffering and his role as physician to mankind. The Wise Men, or Magi, may have been members of an occult school in Media and Persia that specialized in astrology. No one knows how or when tradition turned them into kings and gave them names and ages. Caspar, King of Tarsus, was often represented as a beardless youth of 20; Balthazar, King of Ethiopia, was a black man of about 40; Melchior, King of Arabia, was supposed to be 60. Their remains were said to have been found by St. Helena, the relic-hunting mother of Constantine the Great, and later brought to Cologne Cathedral, which claims them today.

A Second Bethlehem. After the elements of the Nativity scene were established, the first recorded real creche was made in 1223 by St. Francis of Assisi. Christmas had always been for him the "Feast of Feasts" when "God condescended to be fed by human love." In the church at the town of Greccio, three years before he died, St. Francis preached before a manger filled with hay, beside which stood an ox and an ass. Wrote an early biographer, Thomas of Celano: "Greccio was transformed almost into a second Bethlehem, and that wonderful night seemed like the fullest day to both man and beast for the joy they felt at the renewing of the mystery."

The Greccio crib had an instant appeal to the people, with its direct and silent simplicity in an age when the mystery plays had become elaborate and verbose. More and more, painters and sculptors began to concentrate on the episodes surrounding the birth of Jesus, and Renaissance nobles as well as churches began to commission cribs. In the early isth century the talk of Florence was a presepio designed by the young artist Bernardo Buontalenti for the son of Cosimo de Medici. One historian described it as "most singular and new, for not only did one see the heavens open and clouds descend while a quantity of angels flew about and came down to earth, but the innumerable figures all walked toward the holy manger, assuming attitudes which indeed seemed entirely natural."

Such mechanical extravagance became particularly popular in Germany. A gilded brass Krippe was presented in about 1589 to Elector Christian I by his wife, Sophia. When wound up, a globe on top opens, showing God surrounded by angels; a wall below slides back to reveal the manger, angels come down from heaven to music, Joseph rocks the cradle, the ox and ass rise from their knees, and the shepherds march in, followed by the kings.

Happy Papa. Cribmaking reached a peak in the 17th and 18th centuries, and there were no inhibitions against anachronism; in one Augsburg crib the Annunciation takes place in a miniature Louis XVI drawing room with the Angel Gabriel dressed like a court page.

The making of these pious toys became a specialized trade, and Naples was its center, with orders for cribs coming in from all over Europe. In the former royal Neapolitan palace at Caserta are preserved some 300 of the thousands of figurines that once composed Italy's most magnificent presepio, belonging to Bourbon King Charles III of Naples, who spent months arranging it each year in several rooms of the palace, while his queen and her ladies in waiting sewed silk and velvet costumes for the new figures. One of the most striking of the Neapolitan presepios, owned by Collector Marcello Hallecker of Naples, is shown on TIME'S cover this week. Typical of many a presepio of the period, the scene has been arranged on a replica mountainside 12 ft. across. The manger itself is all but obscured by the teeming, noisy crowd that moils about the inn, oblivious of the vertiginous angels or of the event they herald. And yet the actions of the ingeniously lifelike, exquisitely crafted figures--whether they eat or drink or play music or sell vegetables--is suffused with a glaze of color and a glow of pleasure that speak of Christmas.

Social focus of the 17th century Christmas season in Italy consisted of visiting, admiring and criticizing one another's Bethlehems. Soldiers sometimes had to be called out to handle the crowds. But in the Age of Reason, creches tended to become more and more literal representations of the Biblical scene. In the 19th century they grew increasingly sentimental. A major exception were the santons of Provence. Santons (from the Provencal santoun or "little saint") are clay statuettes a quarter-inch to seven inches tall representing characters of everyday 19th century life grouped around the Christ child. This week thousands of them are on sale in France, especially Marseille and Arles--the fishwife with her bowl of bouillabaisse, the hunter holding his grey rabbit, the miller whitened under his bag of flour, the "amazed" man and "amazed" woman with their arms raised in wonder at the sight of the Saviour.

This year, the santonniers have made a long-playing record of the Nativity story, told in Marseillaise patois, that opens with a heavenly trumpeter blowing for joy at the good news. God, he explains, has never been so happy--"Any minute now he is going to be a papa."

The Glittering Tree. In this century, especially since World War II, Italy, the home of the crib, has been progressively invaded by Christmas trees. In 1953 traditionalists formed a Society of Friends of the Presepio, which publishes a quarterly to extol that "good and dear homemade art" and blast "that miserable, shabby tree, garlanded and adorned with cotton snow, all glittering with tinsel." President of the society, Rome's Professor Angelo Stefanucci, 54, ruefully admits that his own children have forced him to set out a Christmas tree as well as a presepio. "The Christmas tree is gradually supplanting the presepio" he said last week. "You can put up a Christmas tree in half an hour, and people are always in a hurry these days."

But in the U.S., where the tinseled tree has long reigned, the Friends of the Presepio may take heart: the Christmas crib is finding a new welcome. In Toledo, for example, more than 100 stores are displaying Nativity scenes, 60 Protestant churches have put up cribs in their churchyards or in public parks, and the Toledo Council of Churches has placed a large manger at the Toledo Airport.

Douglas Wells, of Tucker, Ga.. who retired last winter to devote full time to his hobby of making Nativities, reports that he has never had so many orders for his manger scene ($268 and up), his shepherd scene ($385) and his whole series ($1,400), including the Wise Men, No Room at the Inn, and the Flight into Egypt. Wells also makes a Santa Claus complete with reindeer and sled ($800), but he sells few of them these days.

The A. Da Prato Co. of Charlestown, Mass., which ships home-sized creches all over the country, reports that more and more U.S. families are starting with a Holy Family of three and adding other pieces each year (sheep are $5 each). Tiffany's in Manhattan is celebrating Christmas with a diamond-and-sapphire creche. The Dallas Morning News reports that in private outdoor displays, creches are outrunning Santa Claus 2 to 1, and Dr. Merrill Lenox, executive director of the Detroit and Michigan Council of Churches, said last week: "There is a steadily increasing tendency to place the creche in Protestant churches. What tells about Christmas better?"

The first Nativity plays and cribs were made to do just that--to tell about the incarnation of God to an audience which could not read. The manger with Mary, Joseph and the others was not merely a pretty picture then, nor is it decoration now, when reading is sometimes all too easy. Its use as a stimulant to the Christian imagination and a reminder to believers of the essence of their hope and duty was well exemplified by England's great divine, Lancelot Andrewes, in one of his two memorable sermons on the Wise Men, preached before King James I at Whitehall on Christmas Day 1622.

"It was no summer progress. A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time to take a journey, and specially a long journey in. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off ... the very dead of winter . . .

"And we, what should we have done? ... If rugged or uneven the way, if the weather ill-disposed, if any never so little danger, it is enough to stay us. Come such a journey at such a time? No; but fairly have put it off to the spring of the year, till the days longer, and the ways fairer, and the weather warmer, till better traveling to Christ. Our Epiphany would sure have fallen in Easterweek at the soonest ... To Christ we cannot travel, but weather and way and all must be fair. If not, no journey, but sit still and see farther. As indeed, all our religion is rather vidimus, a contemplation, than venimus, a motion, or stirring to do aught."

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