Belenes

Courtesy of mdiocuh galeals

There are nativity scenes, or Belenes (Bethlehems), popping up everywhere. At Anna’s school each class is responsible for part of the scene. Anna is working on a sheep to add to the flock. Each store, restaurant, home, public office building, has at minimum the nacimiento, the manger scene with Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus usually an angel and a couple animals. But for the vast majority, this is just the nucleus. Most Belenes include the whole village, and sometimes the whole countryside. It takes a village, you know, to raise a baby. The Spanish nativity scene gives you all of it.

One friend told us that when her children were young they set up their Belén early in the month, and the kids moved the figures around to act out the Christmas story during the holiday season. King’s Day is traditionally more important than Christmas Day here, and the day when gifts are exchanged. During the 12 days of Christmas (the days between Christ’s birth and the arrival of the magi), the kids moved the figures of the magi from far away in the fields, through the village, and finally had them arriving at the manager scene on January 6.

We went over to Plaza Mayor to check out the Christmas market where you go to get everything for your Belén. I’ve never been particularly drawn to the nativity scene. But I’m tempted; this looks like a lot of fun. I can imagine getting into an elaborate scene with back stories and developing plot lines. The market is chock full of stalls, each specializing in a particular type of figure or prop. Some carry only the nacimiento, but in every size and price you can image. Some carry only animals. Some of the priciest stalls offer elaborate mechanical moving items: moving windmills, a baker pulling bread of the oven, a man chopping wood. The prices are incredible. Some pieces go for over a couple hundred euros. Other stalls sell minutia: pottery pieces, bundles of firewood, loaves of bread.





The serious connoisseurs don’t randomly buy pieces and throw them together. There is a real art to this process, and families spend years building their villages. The manger scene is the where you start and has to be larger than everything else. Figures at distance from the main action are proportionately smaller to create perspective. This makes me wonder if you move your Wise Men closer and closer to Jesus each day, do you have to get different sized figures to keep things in proper scale throughout the story?

There is another element of the Spanish Belén that Jack wishes I wouldn’t mention. The caganer. Literally, the shitter. The caganer is a Catalonian tradition; a Belén villager caught in the act of squatting with his pants down, yes, taking a dump. Some claim the caganer represents fertilization of the crops, prosperity for the new year. I think mostly it’s Spaniards having a good laugh. He's usually out of the way being discrete. There are traditional caganers, a Catalonian with a little red cap, and more contemporary caganers in the image of just about any public figure you can think of.


In the end, the caganer is the only Belén figure that I bought, but Jack keeps hiding from view when I put it out on the shelf, our only Christmas decoration beyond out little Christmas tree.