Domanda: "Presepe" o "presepio": qual è la forma più corretta in italiano? Esistono delle differenze tra i due termini? Mentre stavo preparando il presepe a me e mia sorella è sorto un dubbio: «ma stiamo preparando il presepe o il presepio?». E' una curiosità sulla lingua italiana che ci è venuta in mente poichè io uso la prima forma ed invece lei la seconda ma quale delle due è effettivamente quella corretta? Esiste una differenza tra "presepe" e "presepio"? Oppure è corretto usare entrambe le forme? 

Risposta: Nella lingua italiana usare "presepe" o "presepio" è indifferente. Cercando su alcuni dizionari online ho trovato per esempio che per il Treccani non c'è alcuna differenza e sul Pianigiani è possibile scrivere "presepe" o "presepio" senza alcun errore. Questo è dato dal fatto che in latino sono presenti sia la forma "praesaepium" (neutro di II declinazione), da cui è derivato "presepio", sia la forma "praesaepe" (neutro di III declinazione)", da cui è derivato "presepe", entrambe con il significato di "mangiatoia". […] La cosa importante da ricordare è che per entrambi i termini il plurale è sempre "presepi".

Nell’uso comune, rappresentazione plastica della nascita di Gesù che si fa nelle chiese e nelle case, nelle festività natalizie e dell’Epifania, riproducendo scenicamente, con figure formate di materiali vari e in un ambiente ricostruito più o meno realisticamente (talora anche anacronistico), le scene della Natività e dell’Adorazione dei Magi.

Italian Christmas Cribs, Nativity Displays and Presepi in Italy

Traditionally, the main focus of Christmas decorations in Italy is the Nativity scene, 
presepe or presepio in Italian. Every church has a presepe and they can be found in squares, shops, and other public areas. Displays often go beyond the manger scene and may even include a representation of the entire village. Presepi are usually set up starting December 8, the Feast Day of the Immaculate Conception, through January 6, Epiphany but some are unveiled on Christmas Eve. Many people set up a Christmas crib in their house and figurines for nativity scenes are made in many parts of Italy, with some of the best coming from Naples and Sicily. Although the presepe is usually set up before Christmas, baby Jesus is added on Christmas Eve. The Nativity scene is said to have originated with St. Francis of Assisi in 1223 when he constructed a nativity scene in a cave in the town of Greccio and held Christmas Eve mass and a nativity pageant there. Greccio reenacts this event each year. Carving figurines for nativity scenes started in the late 13th century when Arnolfo di Cambio was commissioned to carve marble nativity figures for the first Rome Jubilee held in 1300. The nativity can be seen in the museum of Santa Maria Maggiore Church.

Best places to see Chrsitmas Cribs, or Presepi, in Italy

Naples is the best city to visit for their presepi. Hundreds of nativity scenes are erected throughout the city. Some creches are very elaborate and may be handmade or use antique figures. Starting December 8, the Church of Gesu' Nuovo, in Piazza del Gesu', displays nativity scene art work from the Neapolitan Nativity Scenes Association. The street Via San Gregorio Armeno in central Naples is filled with displays and stalls selling Nativity scenes all year. 

Vatican City erects a huge presepe in St. Peter's Square for Christmas and is usually unveiled on Christmas Eve. A Christmas Eve mass is held in St. Peter's square, usually at 10 pm. 

In Rome some of the biggest and most elaborate presepi are found in Piazza del Popolo, Piazza Euclide, Santa Maria in Trastevere, and Santa Maria d'Aracoeli, on the Capitoline Hill. A life-size nativity scene is set up in Piazza Navona where a Christmas marketplace is also set up. The Church of Saints Cosma e Damiano, by the main entrance to the Roman Forum, has a large nativity scene from Naples on display all year.

Bethlehem in the Grotto - an elaborate lifesize nativity scene is created each year and transported to a beautiful grotto in the Abruzzo commune of Stiffe, about 20 miles from L'Aquila. The scene is illuminated and can be visited during December.

Verona has an international display of nativities in the Arena through January.

Trento in northern Italy's Alto-Adige region has a large nativity scene in Piazza Duomo.

Jesolo, 30 km from Venice, has a sand sculpture nativity made by top international sand sculpture artists. It takes place daily in Piazza Marconi through mid-January. Donations are used to fund charitable projects.

Manarola in Cinque Terre has a unique ecological nativity powered by solar energy.

Celleno, a tiny town in the northern Lazio region about 30 km from Viterbo, has a magnificent presepe that is set up for viewing all year. Celleno is also famous for its cherries.

Many churches in Milan have elaborate nativity scenes set up around Christmas time.

Presepio Museums in Italy

Il Museo Nazionale di San Martino in Naples has an elaborate collection of nativity scenes from the 1800s.

Il Museo Tipologico Nazionale del Presepio, under the church of Saints Quirico e Giulitta in Rome, has over 3000 figurines from all over the world made out of almost anything you can imagine. The museum has very limited hours and is closed in summer but they are open each afternoon December 24-January 6. In October they have a course where you can learn to make presepe yourself.

Il Museo Tipologico del Presepio in Macerata in the Marche region has more than 4000 nativity pieces and a 17th century presepe from Naples.

Presepi Viventi, Italian Living Nativity Scenes

Living nativity pageants, presepi viventi, are found in many parts of Italy with costumed people acting out the parts of the nativity. Often living nativity scenes are presented for several days, usually Christmas Day and December 26, and sometimes again the following weekend around the time of Epiphany, January 6, the 12th day of Christmas when the three Wise Men gave Baby Jesus their gifts.

Top places to see living nativity scenes, presepi viventi, in Italy

Frasassi Gorge has one of the largest and most suggestive nativity pageants in Italy. Held on a cliff near the Frasassi Caves, the Genga Nativity Scene includes a procession up the hill to a temple and scenes from everyday life during the time of Jesus' birth. More than 300 actors take part and proceeds are given to charity. Usually held on December 26 and 30.

Barga, a beautiful medieval hill town in northern Tuscany, has a living nativity and Christmas pagaent on December 23.

Chia, near Soriano (see Northern Lazio Map), holds a large living nativity on December 26 with more than 500 participants. There's also one nearby in Bassano.

Custonaci, a small town near Trapani in Sicily, has a beautiful nativity scene re-enacted inside a cave. A tiny town was buried in the cave by a landslide in the 1800's. The cave has been excavated and now serves as a setting for the interesting live nativity events December 25-26 and early January. More than just a nativity, the village is set up to resemble an ancient village with craftspeople and small shops.

Equi Terme, in the Lunigiana region of Tuscany, has a reenactment of the nativity that takes place throughout the village in a beautiful hillside setting.

Vetralla, in the northern Lazio region, has the oldest living nativity in the region.

Rivisondoli, in the Abruzzo region (Abruzzo map), has a reenactment of the arrival of the 3 kings on January 5 with hundreds of costumed participants. Rivisondoli also presents a living nativity December 24 and 25.

L'Aquila and Scanno also in the Abruzzo region have living nativities on Christmas Day as do many other small villages in the region.

Liguria has living nativity scenes in the towns of Calizzano, Roccavignale, and Diano Arentino during December.

Milan has an Epiphany Parade of the Three Kings from the Duomo to the church of Sant'Eustorgio, January 6.

King Charles's passion for building was not consummated with Caserta. He also wished to build a colossal palace for he poor, and Ferdinando Fuga was commissioned to start work on the Reale Albergo dei Poveri in 1751. The actual building, of which the front is 354 metres long, only represents half the original project, as the work on it was interrupted periodically until 1829. Here vagabonds and helpless orphans, the unemployed and unemployable, were to be housed, fed, educated and, if possible, converted into useful citizens. 

The foundation of this enormous hospice was partly inspired by the Dominican Father Rocco, the popular preacher and 'city missionary', one of the most curious Neapolitan characters of the eighteenth century. Born in 1700, he died in 1782; and he spent his long dedicated life among the populace, fulminating against vice, settling petty lawsuits, beating the quarrelsome into peace and fighting sinners with a stout stick or with a heavy crucifix he carried in his belt when his floods of eloquence failed. The lazzaroni responded to one who could express himself masterfully in their language, who could thrill their impressionable minds with the images of his own religious ardour, who fearlessly thrust his way into their lowest haunts, startling the taverns and brothels with apocalyptic visions of woe. 'Now then,' he shouted, 'I want a sign of your repentance and good intentions. Those who are well determined lift your arms!' Every arm was duly raised, and Father Rocco remained silent. After gazing long and expressively, first at the crucifix, then at the image of the Madonna before him, he exclaimed: 'Oh my God! would that I now had a sabre to cut off those hands which have offended you with forgery, with usury, with thievery, with homicides, and with sins of the flesh, so that they may no longer commit these evil actions!' And immediately every hand went down and hid itself, and there was a general outburst of sobbing. Tanucci joked with Galiani about the effect of these sermons, 'which made those rabid propagators of the species laugh and set to work more merrily than before'. Father Rocco was a valuable intermediary between the King and the populace and vice versa. 'The court understands his importance,' wrote Swinburne, 'and has often experienced the good effects of his mediation; though of late years an attention to the plentiful supply of cheap provisions, and a strong garrison, have kept the populace quiet, to a degree unknown in former times, yet particular circumstances may yet render a Neapolitan mob formidable to government. During a late eruption of Vesuvius, the people took offence at the new theatre being more frequented than the churches, and assembled in great numbers to drive the nobility from the opera; they snatched the flambeaux from the footmen, and were proceeding tumultuously to the cathedral to fetch the head of San Gennaro, and oppose its miraculous influence to the threats of the blazing volcano: this would undoubtedly have ended in a very serious sedition if Father Rocco had not stepped forth, and after reproaching them bitterly with the affront they were about to put upon the saint by attending his relics with torches taken from mercenary hands, ordered them all to go home and provide themselves with wax tapers; the crowd dispersed, and proper" measures were taken to prevent its gathering again.' 

Father Rocco's influence on Charles, and later on his son, led to the foundation of many charitable institutions, of which the Albergo dei Poveri is the most striking. Naples was also indebted to him for the first experiment in lighting the streets. All previous attempts had failed when he suggested setting up holy shrines at every convenient corner, beginning with the darkest and most dangerous; and he soon roused a general competition for supplying the lamps before these shrines with oil. They are kept burning to this day in many a sombre alley, and until 1806 they provided the city's only regular illumination. Father Rocco began a vigorous campaign against gambling, which had become a general epidemic. To persuade the King to support it, he is said to have compiled a list of the noble families ruined by this vice, so that Charles exclaimed in horror: 'Father Rocco, I do not wish to be a king of beggars ! - hence the decree against gambling of November 24, 1753. 

Nowhere else has the pious custom of the presepe, or Christmas crib, assumed so many delightful forms, and Father Rocco did much to popularize it. He wished to bring the Mystery of the Nativity to the people and make them visualize it. Half his cell was filled with a presepe  which he constantly improved with additional figures and effective details. The figures were usually about six inches high carved in sycamore wood. Before Christmas he bustled about the shops of sculptors and artisans, such as still exist in the Vico dei Figurari, to criticize and encourage their work. A realist himself, he persuaded them to avoid the rococo mannerisms of the sculptors then in vogue. He set up a Nativity scene in a grotto near Capodimonte, which the King often stopped to admire on his way to the hunt. 

Charles himself designed and modelled the settings for the Christmas crib in the royal palace, dabbling in clay and cutting up cork for the manger, while the Queen and Princesses sewed and embroidered costumes for the figures, each according to scale. The aristocracy and wealthy merchants followed the King's example, so that the presepe increased in gorgeousness and variety, and this was the period of its highest artistic development. 

The most elaborate consisted of three scenes, the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Tavern (or divmarium); occasionally the Massacre of the Innocents was added. The skyborne angel waking the shepherds was more or less conventional, but fancy ran riot in the Tavern scene, where peasants were gathered in cheerful gossip or sang to the guitar, while a rubicund innkeeper prepared a feast to satisfy the most ravenous appetite. Palestine was conceived in terms of the Neapolitan landscape; often Vesuvius erupted boisterously in the background. Hundreds of figures were scattered across the scene; except for the Blessed Virgin, Saint Joseph and the angels, who wore the traditional robes, all were clad in contemporary costume. The Magi wore long cloaks like the knights of San Gennaro. Their retinue were decked in the trappings of Africa and Asia; Mongols and Kaffirs mingled with Circassians and Hindoos; pages, cup-bearers, grooms, guards, slaves were loaded with precious caskets, besides the gold and frankincense and myrrh. The peasants and shepherds wore the festive apparel of Ischia, Procida and other parts of the Two Sicilies. Some were portraits of well-known personalities like Father Rocco; occasionally Pulcinella and characters from the Commedia dell' Arte were introduced. Such famous sculptors as Sammartino, Celebrano and the Bottiglieri brothers devoted much time and skill to this form of art. Some specialized in domestic animals; others in fish, fruit, vegetables and groceries. Exuberance and profusion flourish; most of these tableaux interpret the jovial, sensuous, expansive aspects of the Neapolitan temperament. The artisans shared the faith of the simple shepherds. 

The King was at one with his people in exalting the family cult by this outward symbol of the sacred mystery. As long as the Bourbon dynasty ruled Naples, the presepe was the centre of Christmas rejoicings. The whole Court accompanied the King and Queen from church to church to visit the Nativity scenes which were their special pride. Soft organ music and the light of candles helped to foster the illusion of reality. The crib in the Jesuit Church of Gesu Nuovo always attracted a large crowd, as its Babe was said to have spoken to a Moorish slave and converted him. A hymn commemorated the miracle: 'The Infant Jesus in the manger speaketh to a slave.' Outside in the streets, Calabrian bagpipers, like the Biblical shepherds, wailed poignant melodies. In private houses the Babe was usually removed from the manger before Christmas Eve. Then a party would be given, enlivened with music and impromptu poems until midnight, when a priest recited prayers, after which the Babe was consigned to the youngest girl in the family, who restored it to the crib. 

'In many houses a room, in some a whole suite of apartments, in others a terrace upon the house-top, is dedicated to this very uncommon show,' wrote Mrs Piozzi. 'One wonders, and cries out it is certainly but a baby-house at best; yet, managed by people whose heads, naturally turned towards architecture and design, give them power thus to defy a traveller not to feel delighted with the general effect; while if every single figure is not capitally executed and nicely expressed beside, the proprietor is truly miserable, and will cut a new cow, or vary the horse's attitude, against next Christmas, coûte que coûte [cost what it may]. And perhaps I should not have said so much about the matter if there had not been shown me within this last week presepios which have cost their possessors fifteen hundred or two thousand English pounds; and rather than relinquish or sell them, many families have gone to ruin. I have wrote the sums down in letters not figures, for fear of the possibility of a mistake. One of these playthings had the journey of the three kings represented in it, and the presents were all of real gold and silver finely worked; nothing could be better or more livelily finished. '"But, sir," said I, "why do you dress up one of the wise men with a turban and crescent, six hundred years before the birth of Mahomet, who first put that mark in the forehead of his followers? The eastern magi were not Turks; this is a breach of costume." My gentleman paused, and thanked me; said he would inquire if there was nothing heretical in the objection; and if all was right, it should be changed next year without fail.' 

Charles became so addicted to this Neapolitan custom that he introduced it into Spain, whence he continued to order figures of shepherds and other Nativity properties from Naples.

Provvedimenti ancora più solleciti si registrano a Napoli dove fin dal 1770 il governo ordina che tutti gli edifici pubblici, i Banchi, i palazzi dei ministri, degli ambasciatori e dei nobili di grande casato, tengano fanali accesi di notte davanti alle porte e agli angoli delle strade; in seguito ne viene collocato un centinaio lungo la strada di Forcella. Ma si tratta di un’illuminazione di breve durata in quanto le luci vengono presto abbattute da malviventi che necessitano del buio per poter svolgere le loro illecite attività. Per ovviare a questo grave inconveniente si racconta che padre Gregorio Maria Rocco (1700-1782), ottenuta la licenza dal re, inizia a disporre nei punti più trafficati, e in apposite nicchie, 300 copie di un quadro raffigurante la Vergine e 100 figure del Cristo montate su altrettante croci di legno: da quel giorno si registra una vera e propria gara da parte dei fedeli per mantenere continuamente accesi, sia di giorno che di notte, due fanali ai lati di ciascuna raffigurazione sacra. Con questo espediente Napoli riesce finalmente ad essere illuminata, persino nei vicoli in precedenza troppo bui e pericolosi.

Making a scene with presepio nativity figures

• THE AUSTRALIAN, DECEMBER 20, 2014
• Last year our stolid Canberra crescent of solid brick-houses from the 1960s became home to an architecture award-winning new house that changes colour as you walk past and has a pool on the front deck. To say it’s cutting edge as it changes from a deep pink to purple is clearly understatement.
• It also has a huge glass foyer that would do a middle office tower in Manhattan proud to offset the transplanted mature weeping cherries and camellias in the front yard. For all these modern touches it was doubly, no triply, surprising to walk past at the beginning of December and see an almost life-size nativity scene — Mary, Jesus and Joseph and the three kings — nestling happily in front of the water feature in the foyer.
  
  
• It was a clash or meeting of the 21st and 13th centuries, a meeting all the more remarkable for me to consider that one more Italian tradition is moving into modern Australia. For years now Christmas in Australia has included a flood of Italian treats, led by the now ubiquitous panet­tone, into delis, department stores and gourmet shops.
  
  The appeal to non-Italian markets has gone so far that panettone tins, once reserved only for ancient recipes and the baking family’s lineage, now feature Santas and American-style Christmas scenes. Was I witnessing the migration of Italy’s great Christmas tree alternative — the presepio — to Australia and how was it happening?
  
  The presepio, or nativity or crib scene, in Italy is far more than a little plastic scene depicting Jesus in the manger, perhaps with a wise man or three.
  
  The presepio is an 800-year-old tradition including a sweep from high art to church devotions and down to the most humble family presentation that was once the universal Christmas display devoid of wasteful and space-consuming trees.
  
  While the holy family of Mary, Jesus and Joseph is the centre of the prespio, some have become so grand and huge that they cover galleries of activity depicting whole villages or huge tracts of countryside. Putting out the presepio, without the baby Jesus until Christmas Eve of course, is as big a deal in Italy as the arrival of the Christmas tree in Australia.
  
  Being an Aussie-Italo family we do both on the same day and lay out a collection of  scores of figures depicting an Italian village surrounded by Abruzzi shepherds with their traditional bagpipes. (They traditionally came to play in the streets of Rome when high mountains of Abruzzo were covered with snow at Christmas.)
• It was St Francis of Assisi who started the presipio in 1223 in the village of Greccio using real people, real animals and a real grotto to encourage devotion to the birth of Christ. By 1300 there began to be marble depictions of the scene of the birth of Christ with a donkey and ox present accompanied by a few shepherds and, later, the three wise men. Presepi became art forms, particularly in Naples and Sicily, and live portrayals as well as large representations in churches spread through Italy.
  
  King Charles III of Naples commissioned a huge presipio from the greatest artists of the day and now, all through the year, the church of Cosma and Damiano, on the edge of the Forum in Rome, displays such a scene so large it is difficult to find Jesus in the crib because of the various depictions of village life, from trades to cooking, that surround them.
  
  But it is the family presepio that takes pride of place in Italian hearts. Philosopher and writer Umberto Eco has written lovingly of his family’s presepio and how his father would gradually move the three kings through their house from December 8, the traditional day for the presepio to go up, until January 6, the feast of the Ephinany when the kings arrive with their gifts, when they arrived on the sideboard.
  
  Laura Bush caused a stir when she was in the White House by installing a presepio that had been a gift to the White House from Naples, but most modern Italian families can’t afford the expensive handcrafted wooden figurines that include shepherds, sheep, ducks, the “duck lady”, the goose man, the wine seller, the water carrier, the fisherman ... you get the idea.

• Like ours, gathered across 30 years of trips to Italy, many scenes have eclectic members from different styles and types, many plastic, some wood and now with tiny electric motors driving fires under cauldrons and water through fountains and wells. Children invariably fiddle and fuss with the placement of the characters right up to Christmas Eve and some fathers are known to smuggle extra figures from Italy that have been purchased from Brico — the Italian equivalent of Bunnings, which clears out its summer barbecue area and fills it with diorama backgrounds, electric gadgets and a vast array of figures.
  
  With Brico filling the gap for families wanting a cheaper traditional alternative to the more northerly Christmas tree in Italy the question remains how the 21st-century house down the street got its 13th-century decoration? The answer is that great cultural magpie, the US. As part of a thriving street decoration tradition in middle America large presipios now jostle with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in department stores.
  
  It’s a long way around, but who knows? Australian households, wary of real trees and troubled by lack of space in modern flats, may just start making the 21st century switch to the 13th.
  
  Dennis Shanahan is the political editor of The Australian.

≪A proposito di Natale, io e il barone abbiamo cominciato a fare il presepe come tutti gli anni e ci sono voluti due giorni solo per aprire tutte le scatole dei pastori, levare la polvere ed incollare con la colla di pesce braccia e gambe spezzate.≫

≪Il presepe≫ dice il professore ≪per noi napoletani è una cosa veramente importante, lei ingegnere scusi preferisce il presepe o l’albero di Natale?≫

≪Il presepe, ovviamente.≫

≪E ne sono contento per lei≫ mi dice il professore stringendomi la mano. ≪Veda, gli esseri umani si dividono in presepisti ed alberisti e questa è una conseguenza della suddivisione del mondo in mondo d’amore e mondo di libertà ma questo è un discorso lungo che potremo fare un’altra volta, oggi invece vi vorrei parlare del presepe e dei presepisti≫

≪Forza professò ≫ dice Salvatore. ≪Parlateci del presepe che qua stanno i ragazzi vostri!≫

≪Dunque , come vi dicevo, la suddivisione in presepisti ed alberisti è tanto importante che, secondo me, dovrebbe comparire sui documenti d’identità come il sesso ed il gruppo sanguigno. E già per forza, perché altrimenti un povero dio rischierebbe di scoprire solo a matrimonio avvenuto di essersi unito con un cristiano di tendenze natalizie diverse. Adesso sembra che io esageri, eppure è così: l’alberista si serve per vivere di una scala di valori completamente diversa da quella del presepista. Il primo tiene in gran conto la Forma, il Denaro e il Potere; il secondo invece pone ai primi posti l’Amore e la Poesia.≫

≪Noi qua in questa casa≫ dice Saverio, ≪siamo tutti presepisti, è vero professò?≫

≪No, non tutti. Mia moglie e mia figlia, ad esempio, come quasi tutte le donne, sono alberiste.≫

≪Ad Assuntina piace l’albero di Natale≫ dice sottovoce Saverio.

≪Tra le due categorie non ci può essere colloquio, uno parla e l’altro non capisce. La moglie vede che il marito fa il presepe e dice: “Ma perché invece di appuzzolentire tutta casa con la colla di pesce, il presepe non lo vai a comprare già bello e fatto all’UPIM?”. Il marito non risponde. E già perché all’UPIM si può comprare l’albero di Natale che è bello solo quando è finito e quando si possono accendere le luci, il presepe invece no, il presepe è bello quando lo fai o addirittura quando lo pensi: “Adesso viene Natale e facciamo il presepe. Quelli a cui piace l’albero di Natale sono solo dei consumisti, il presepista invece, bravo o non bravo, diventa creatore ed il suo vangelo è “Natale in casa Cupiello”.≫

≪Io l’ho visto professò e mi ricordo di quando Eduardo dice: “Il presebbio l’ho fatto tutto da solo e contrastato dalla famiglia”.≫

≪I pastori≫ continua Bellavista. ≪Debbono essere quelli di creta, fatti a mano, un poco brutti e soprattutto nati a San Gregorio Armeno, nel cuore di Napoli, e non quelli di plastica che si vendono all’UPIM, e che sembrano finti; i pastori debbono essere quelli degli anni precedenti e non fa niente se sono quasi tutti un poco scassati, l’importante è che il capofamiglia li conosca per nome uno per uno, e sappia raccontare per ogni pastore nu bello fattariello (un bel aneddoto): “Questo è Benito che non teneva voglia (aveva voglia) di lavorare e che dormiva sempre; questo è il padre di Benito che pascolava le pecore sopra alla montagna; e questo è il pastore della meraviglia” e a mano a mano che i pastori escono dalla scatola, c’è la presentazione. Il padre presenta i pastori ai figli più piccoli, che così ogni anno, quando viene Natale, li possono riconoscere e li possono voler bene come a persone di famiglia. Personaggi della vita, anche se storicamente inaccettabili come ‘O monaco (il monaco)  e ‘O cacciatore c’o fucile (il cacciatore col fucile).≫

≪Professò, po’ ce sta (poi c'è) ‘o cuoco (il cuoco), ‘a tavulella cu’ e’ ddoie coppie assettate (la tavola con le due coppie sedute), ‘o mellunaro (il venditore di cocomeri), o’ verdummaro (il venditore di verdura), chille ca venne ‘e castagne (quello che vende le castagne), ‘o canteniere (il vinaio), ‘o chianchiere (il macellaio).≫

≪Ebbè,≫ dice Salvatore «pure a quell’epoca si doveva faticare fino a notte tarda per poter campare.≫

≪E poi ci sta ‘a lavannara (la lavandaia),≫ continua Saverio ≪‘o pastore che porta ‘e pullastre (il personaggio che porta i polli [a Napoli, per pastore s'intende qualsiasi statuina del presepe eccetto la Sacra Famiglia, gli angeli, i Re magi, e le figurine di animali]), ‘o piscatore che pesca overamente (il pescatore che pesca per davvero) nell’acqua vera che scende da dentro all’enteroclisma (in inglese: enema) messo dietro al presepe.≫

≪Papà mio,≫ dice Luigino, ≪quelli un poco scassati li riusciva sempre a mettere in maniera tale che poi nessuno si accorgeva se tenevano un braccio o una gamba di meno; mi diceva: “Luigì, adesso papà trova una posizione strategica per questo povero pastoriello che ha perduto una coscia”, e lo piazzava dietro a una siepe o dietro a un muretto, e poi mi ricordo che avevamo un pastore che ogni anno si perdeva qualche pezzo, tanto che alla fine ci rimase solo la testa e papà la piazzò dietro a una finestrella di una casetta. Papà le casette le faceva con le scatole delle medicine e poi dentro ci metteva la luce, e quando, durante l’anno, io mi dovevo prendere una medicina, per esempio uno sciroppo che non mi piaceva, allora lui prendeva lo scatolino e mi diceva: “Luigì, questo scatolo ce lo conserviamo per quando viene Natale, che cosi ne facciamo una bella casetta per il presepio, tu però bell’ 'e papà (bello di papà) devi finire prima la medicina che ci sta dentro, se no papà la casarella (la casetta) come la fa?”≫

≪E poi, quando veniva la mezzanotte,≫ continua Salvatore ≪ci mettevamo tutti in processione e giravamo per tutta la casa cantando “Tu scendi dalle stelle”. Il più piccolo della famiglia avanti con il bambino Gesù, e tutti quanti dietro con una candela accesa tra le mani.≫

≪O’ presepe (il presepe)! L’addore d’a colla ‘e pesce (l'odore della colla di pesce), ‘o suvero  pe fa ‘e muntagne (il sughero per fare le montagne), ‘a farina pe fa ‘a neve… (la farina per fare la neve...)≫ 

panettóne s. m. [adattam. del milan. panattón, der. di pane]:

Tipico dolce milanese, a forma di cupola, la cui lavorazione comporta due impasti, il primo, alla sera, fatto con farina, lievito, burro e zucchero, il secondo, al mattino seguente, fatto con farina, burro, zucchero, sale, cedro, uva sultanina e tuorli d’uovo, che vengono incorporati nella pasta già lievitata, ottenendo così un nuovo impasto che, collocato in stampi cilindrici, è cotto in forno; attribuito dalla leggenda alla corte viscontea del ’300, ma probabilmente di origine più antica, è tradizionale in tutta Italia come dolce natalizio. 

Italian food conservatism expressed itself in other ways. One of the most influential was nostalgia. In the very years when they were taking their first steps as consumers, Italians also discovered that the authentic ingredients and dishes of days gone by were an endangered treasure. Just as hunger was disappearing from the peninsula, Italians were told that good food was a thing of the past. 

One of the most captivating early expressions of Italian food nostalgia was a series filmed during the year, 1957, that advertising first appeared on Italian television. The twelve episodes of In Search of Genuine Foods. A Journey along the Po Valley were a major undertaking for Italy's RAI TV, which itself had only been in operation for three years: the camera and sound crew was fifteen-strong, and they travelled in a six-vehicle convoy that included a lorry and a minibus. In Search of Genuine Foods was made and presented by Mario Soldati. Apart from being a novelist, screenwriter and film-maker, he was also Italy's most eloquent 'wandering glutton' in the tradition established during the Fascist era by the Touring Club Italiano and Paolo Monelli. Soldati's idiosyncratic and opinionated style is stamped all over his programme. He looked like a movie director who had hired himself from Central Casting - beret, tortoiseshell glasses, neat little moustache, sports jacket, and an eyepiece worn round the neck. He showed himself standing up in his jeep at the head of the convoy, and ordering his film crew around with peremptory blasts on a whistle. His interviewing style involved rarely allowing anyone else to finish a sentence. It all made for superb entertainment, and a remarkable document of the changing face of Italian food. 

Soldati's aim was to seek out what he called 'genuine gastronomy'. Some of his programme's earliest sequences, shot in his home region of Piedmont, show most clearly what he had in mind. By a mountain torrent below the snowy, pyramid-shaped peak of Mount Monviso close to the source of the Po, Soldati films a man fishing with a rod and line for trout no longer than his hand. Down in the plain near Chieri, he interviews a peasant about the cardoons he grows; after being buried to their tips for eight days to acquire the right pallor, they are sent just up the road to Turin where they are dipped in bagna cauda, the city's warm garlic and anchovy sauce. In the seventeenth-century town of Chierasco, Soldati examines the local 'horse-rump bullocks', which are fed a special diet, including eggs, to accentuate the distinctive shape and taste of their haunches. In Turin itself, Soldati sees grissini breadsticks made by hand, and visits one of Italy's oldest and grandest restaurants, just across from the building that accommodated the country's first parliament. Back in the studio, he introduces a countess in twin-set and pearls who demonstrates how to make a fondue topped with truffle shavings, and explains that 'social tragedy' is the fate of any housewife who serves her guests a fondue that is stringy rather than creamy. This was an image of Italian eating that could easily have been painted a century earlier. 

But perhaps the most telling moment in Soldati's journey is when he finds himself amid the huge steel tubes, enamelled vats and gleaming domed inspection hatches of a giant cheese factory near Lodi, south-east of Milan. Here the boss is not a landowner but an entrepreneur in a double-breasted suit, and his key employees wear white coats and spend their time taking readings from gauges. The milk comes from cows reared on concentrated soya-based feeds from Japan. Looking around him, Soldati removes his beret and gives his head a demonstratively downhearted scratch. Then, talking direct to camera in a resigned tone, he concedes that there is no other way adequately to feed the masses: 'The great majority of what we eat is industrialised. So if I had had to limit my search for what is genuine only to things that are artisanal, hand-made and traditional, I would have ended up showing you, the viewers, a gastronomy that would be out of reach in most cases. Unless you wanted to die of hunger.' Soldati's mood picks up as the factory tour progresses. He sees large balls of provolone being shaped by hand, and perfect, house-shaped stacks of the mulberry logs that are burned to smoke the cheese. At the end of the tour, the genuine and the industrial are reconciled when Soldati takes a stroll in a warehouse where some of the factory's 50,000 Grana Padano cheeses are slowly maturing. He ends the programme at table, extolling the time-honoured virtues of Grana and Parmigiano-Reggiano, the two varieties of Parmesan. Recalling an ancient piece of Italian wisdom, he recommends that the 'king of cheeses' be eaten at the end of a meal with 'the queen of fruits', the pear. 

The curious thing about Soldati's search for genuine foods is his uncertainty. He never quite makes up his mind where to draw the line between what is genuine and what is industrial. Part of him wants to restrict 'genuine' to the man fishing for trout in the Alps. Another part of him is less wistful. Some of Italian food's most genuine traditions centre on products like cheeses, hams, salami and pasta secca: they were originally designed for preservation, transport and trade, and therefore lend themselves well to industrial methods. Telling the difference between what is genuine and what is artificial is not always as easy as choosing a plate of maccheroni over a concoction of jam, yoghurt, mustard and milk. 

Soldati's uncertainty has run through the history of Italian food since the economic miracle. Italy is still a country 'in search of genuine foods', a country permanently nostalgic for the dishes of yesteryear. What the term 'genuine' might actually mean has never been clear: it is too misted with nostalgia, too vulnerable to appropriation by advertisers. Yet 'genuine' has retained its magical aura. Despite the confusion surrounding it, a belief in what is genuine, combined with a regret for what has become industrial or artificial, has been written into the statutes of Italy's civilisation of the table: it has become an article of Italian gastronomic faith. 

Italians only take foods to their hearts that have a claim to being genuine. Or 'typical' or 'authentic' or 'traditional', which have the same vague and evocative appeal. The contemporary era is the era of national foods, dishes that, for the first time in history, have united culinary Italy from north to south, and from top to bottom of the social scale. All national foods have a sound pedigree in one or other region of the peninsula, yet all are made on an industrial scale. Panettone is one instance: the deliciously soft, light cake with candied fruit was originally a Milanese speciality. But by the time of In Search of Genuine Foods, shrewd marketing had turned it into a Christmas treat for all. One company used to present panettoni to winners in the hugely popular Giro d'Italia cycle race. Genuine Milanese panettone was already becoming an object of nostalgia - Soldati visits a pastry shop that is one of the few still making it in the original way. 

Other national dishes, like pizza and mozzarella, came from the south to conquer the north. The provolone that Soldati sees being made at the factory in Lombardy is another case in point. This melon-shaped cheese was brought up to the Po valley in the early 1900s by southern entrepreneurs in search of a more fertile commercial terrain. The factory owner tells Soldati that 70 to 80 per cent of provolone is now made in the north. 

The mass migration of the economic miracle had much to do with this nationalisation process. Southerners took their favourite foods to Turin, for example, and in time they also learned to like bagna cauda, just as the torinesi learned to like pasta with tomato sauce (although in the early years prejudiced locals sneered that 'dirty southerners' grew tomatoes in the bathtub and basil in the bidet). 

Since the 1950S, the spread of national dishes has gathered pace and, in the process, the confusion surrounding what is genuine has become ever greater. In most of Italy, there is nothing traditional about eating rocket, balsamic vinegar and buffalo-milk mozzarella. Yet these foods became national crazes in the 1980s and 1990S by selling themselves as authentic products, hallowed by the ages. (Shortly afterwards, of course, the craze swept through supermarkets in the rest of the world.) Italian food can only reinvent itself by pretending it has stayed the same. Change only comes in the guise of continuity; novelties must be presented as nostalgic relics. This food conservatism is a cultural quirk that makes for a great deal of misunderstanding and cant. But it is the Italian civilisation of the table's saving virtue in the age of mass production.

I don't know about the rest of Italy - I hear it's different in the South - but here people seem to have used up all their culinary inspiration on the savouries and have none left over for the sweet stuff. The favourite local pastry, over which our friends here go into delirium, is a thing called the crostata, a close relative of the jam tart, but rather more like the bits of leftover pastry our granny used to spread thinly with jam and bung into the bottom of the oven for us kids so it wouldn't go to waste. I daresay if this is all you're used to in the way of baked sweetmeats, panettone isn't too bad. Maybe, but we can't keep up with the steady influx of the things, and by the sixth or seventh day of Christmas the boxes of half-eaten panettone sitting about the place have begun to mount up disturbingly. Even more annoyingly, since you can't go to anyone's house without one, we keep having to go and buy more of the things into the bargain. In desperation we come up with a cunning plan: we'll recycle them. As each new one arrives, we pop it, still in its huge box, on to the shelf with its friends and relations, and offer chunks from an earlier one instead. Now we can take the unopened ones with us on our own calls, dramatically reducing the backlog and concealing our ungratefulness at a stroke. Clever. 


Or perhaps not so clever after all: we soon find out that we are not alone in thinking up this solution to the overwhelmed-by-panettone period. One of our own recycled items reappears upon our kitchen table a week later, recognizable by a bit of my scribbling on its box. We can't remember who originally gave it to us, or who we passed it on to, there being so many of the things flying about at the moment, but with the help of the shamefaced culprits Mimmo and Lorella we work out that it has visited at least four homes on its Christmas circuit without ever being opened so far: must have done, because it was given to them by someone we hardly know and can't possibly have given it to. Food for thought. Can the whole panettone business be an enormous confidence trick? Are we the only people foolish enough to actually eat the things?