WALA LANG
We don’t do things by halves and, on top of our own paról, we add Spanish, Mexican, Italian, German, and American touches.
Some 800 years ago in Italy, St. Francis of Assisi thought of reenacting the nativity as part of Christmas celebrations. The idea caught fire and even royalty imagined and created marvelous dioramas and figures. To this day, Italian families assemble room-sized nativity scenes (presepio) expanded to include life in the town of Bethlehem while maintaining spiritual symbolisms.
ELEMENTS OF THE BELÉN An Italian presepio (Google Images)
More than merely being dolls, the figures of a presepio each have a meaning.
- A sleeping shepherd looking after 12 sheep signifies the unknowing people to whom angels announce the coming of Christ and the sheep represent the 12 apostles.
- The Three Kings/Magi represent Asia, Africa, and Europe paying homage to Christ and are shown arriving on a camel, an elephant and a horse respectively.
- Among the Bethlehem townspeople are a butcher and vendors of cheese, poultry, eggs, fruits, bread, wine, and fish representing the months of year when their products become available. For example, the castañera, an old woman roasting chestnuts, represents the month of November when chestnuts are in season.
- There could also be cardplayers, a monk, a GRO, a fortuneteller, a laundry woman, and oddly a man, with pants down and bare backside, pooping, known as caganer. I understand Queen Elizabeth has been so featured and I have one of Donald Trump doing his thing, bought at the belén fair held at Madrid’s Plaza Mayor at this time of year. I have no idea what this means—that stripped of external accouterments, all men/women are equal?
ELEMENTS OF THE BELÉN - Donald Trump as a caganer.
The idea spread to Spain, to Mexico where they call it El Nacimiento and eventually here. So we adorn our homes with paról, belén, and Christmas trees (a German brainchild); warn toddlers they’d better not pout because Santa Claus is coming to town; and enthusiastically belt out “Dashing through the snow…” and “Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer” without having seen either.
Our paról supposedly originated from the lanterns that guided Mass-goers to the pre-dawn Misas de Aguinaldo and the Dec. 24 midnight Misa de Gallo. Whatever its origin, our paról has mutated from the simple papel de Japón on a bamboo stick framework to the bungalow-size San Fernando spectaculars that can immobilize a fuse box.
I don’t know if the good padres still mount it, but one of my boyhood memories is the Christmastime nativity scene of Baguio Cathedral. Once, too, the Christmas décor of Malacañang included an antique life-size tableau. Mary and Joseph were in gold embroidered velvet and the infant Jesus seemed to be of solid ivory. (I wonder where they now are.) The belén of a Makati home occupies one side of a large sala, the nativity in snowy countryside with a running train, ski jump, merry-go-round, a waterfall and lake with real water, and so on.
ELEMENTS OF THE BELÉN - An Ilocos belén
We seem to have varying regional traditions. A late 19th century Ilocos belén up for bids at a recent Leon Gallery auction clearly follows the European model. It was in its original urna and consisted of Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus, the three Kings kneeling before the infant, a woman with a pot on her head and other townspeople bearing gifts, a couple of cows, an angel, and surprisingly, what seems to be a caganer.
A Bohol set is different. Probably early 19th century, it consists of the Holy Family and the seven archangels. The other usual figures are missing. In other sets, probably of an even earlier date, the sleeping child (Niño Dormido) is on a four-poster bed.
New Yorkers flock to Rockefeller Center to admire a giant Christmas tree by the ice skating rink and to the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to view the “Angel Tree.” With awesome ornaments and lights are Neapolitan 18th century angel figures, as if keeping watch over Mary, Joseph, and the newborn Jesus in the stable below.
The most elaborate belén I’ve seen was commissioned for a Spanish Infante. Belén is of course Spanish for the town of Bethlehem and the ensemble filled a large salon of Madrid’s Palacio Reál. Set on a vast table, the belén was indeed the town of Bethlehem. One first saw fields in the town’s outskirts, farmers busy at work. Then one entered the town, on cobbled streets with children at play, past homes with housewives at windows gossiping and hanging out the wash. At the plaza were men carousing at a tavern, vendors and shoppers, aristocrats in their carriages, officers on horses. Three visiting Kings had gone ahead, each with wife and kids, officials, servants, security, baggage carts, kitchen ware—the works.
A star was up ahead and in sight were three dozen angels hovering above a humble hut surrounded by shepherds and their flocks and townspeople bearing gifts for the newly born savior.
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