Anna's Christmas tale

“Granny, have you already prepared your nativity scene?”

“Of course, Giulia. I set it up yesterday.”

“Can we come to see it tomorrow after the cooking lesson?”

“Certainly. I am waiting for you…”

Giulia and Mario approached the old credenza in their grandmother’s living room. Anna had moved the photos and the objects to the small table in the corner to make room for the traditional nativity scene. It was a particularly precious set because it was made entirely of colorful Murano glass. It consisted of some little statues representing Joseph, Maria, Jesus, an ox and an ass, some sheep, some shepherds, an angel, the magi, some women and some men. There were also buildings, apart from the stable with a star on the roof: there was Herod’s castle and some houses that created the perfect backdrop for the main scene in the foreground. She had taken the whole set with her from Italy, when she had moved with her husband to Canada thirty-seven years before. It had been in her home since she was a child, because it belonged to her mother. It was linked to memories of all her wonder as a little girl every time her mum took out the small statues from the box, of her eagerness to see the scene completed with little strings of lights around it and little houses in the background, of her emotion when, at midnight on Christmas day, her mother allowed her to take out the little baby Jesus. She still remembered her tension, her fear of breaking the most important figurine, when she took the tiny statue of a sleeping baby in her hands, and she placed it with great care into the manger between Joseph and Maria.

For a few years, after she had arrived in Canada, she had been able to go back to Italy at Christmas time, but then she had had her daughter, and she had started to celebrate Christmas in her new community. Her children had always loved her nativity scene and the stories she used to tell them about the various figures. Anna turned on the string of lights that surrounded the scene and the windows in the little houses in the background lit up. It was really a small village with people, animals and houses. On a hill made of paper-mache on the right side there was the silhouette of Herod’s castle, which seemed to look menacingly over the peaceful scene below.

Silvia, Anna's daughter, told her children, who were silently looking at the beauty of the little statues: “Ask Granny to tell you one of the stories she used to tell your uncle and me…” Anna felt tears coming to her eyes, because this would be the first Christmas since her son Luca’s death. When her children were more or less Giulia and Mario’s age, they liked to listen to the stories she made up, taking inspiration from the figures in the nativity scene and from the tales her mother used to tell her when she was a child.

She turned to her grandchildren, and she explained:

“In Italy this is called Presepio and it is traditionally believed that it was invented by St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of Italy.”

Giulia asked: “Who is a patron saint?”

Anna answered: "He or she is the protector of the nation, the saint who takes care of the inhabitants of that country."

Mario intervened: "Who is the Patron saint of Canada?"

“He is St. Joseph!” Silvia answered, pointing at the little statue in front of the stable. Anna delicately picked up the figure of a shepherd with a little lamb in his arms. The children sat down on the sofa next to the credenza, and Anna put the little statue on the coffee table in front of them. She started, pointing at the shepherd: