The Italian say:"Natale con i tuoi; Pasqua con chi vuoi"."Christmas with your family, Easter with whomever you like". At Christmastime whole families come together to celebrate in the intimacy of the home. Fat logs burn in the fireplace and rooms are scented with the driede rinds of mandarin oranges that have been tossed in to the flames. Rome is the place to be at this time, since the pope is at St.Peter's and even the gypsies are dressed extravagantli for midnight mass at Santa Maria Aracoeli, where the huge wooden Christ Child in the creche wears a crown of jewels and is swathed in golden and silve cloth. "A little wooden doll, in face very much like Tom Thumb, the American dwarf" said Charles Dickens. By the middle of December you can smell Christmas in the crisp air, in the chestnuts roasting at street corners, and in the steamy fragrance spilling out the doors of bakeries and restaurants. You can feel in the sharp drop of temperature as fountains frost over leaving tritons and nymphs reading on icicles. You can here it in the mournful tunes played by the zampognari, Italy'sbagpipers, shepherds who have come down from the Abruzzo montains dressed in crisscrossed leather leggings that reach up to the kness.

The zampognari arrive some days before Christmas, but they used to arrive much earlier and always charged a set rate for a nine-day serenade to the Madonna called a novena. Now they merely hold out their hats and everyone drops un a few coins or bills.

Shepherds carry gifts of bread, ricotta , lamb , and greens to the grotto, were a baby lies in a manger with donkeys and oxen on their knees and Mary and Joseph and above it all an angel is suspended against a sky glowing with tiny stars.

Saint Francis made the first crche in the little town of Greccio in 1223 as a way of drammatically telling the story of the birth of Jesus. He created a manger in the straw and surrounded it with the full cast of characters: shepherds, cattle, donkeys, the Magi, Mary, and Joseph and Jesus:In the centuries that follow his innovation became one of the strongest, most endearing parts of the Christmas celebration. Today in Naples,the shepherds' market has everything for Christmas especially the clay figures for manger, and in three or four winding alleys off Spaccanapoli you can see artisans hard at work making figures that are shipped all over the world.

In Rome many wndows are filled with beautifully rendered fantasies of a small village in Jesus'time.Landscapes are painted so that the story of the miracle in Bethlehem looks truly natural to Italians, especially since all the terracotta figures are dressed in Italian clothes:

Laura Carluccio and Carlotta Borsari