My Merry Christmas!
Pierluigi Magnaschi, editor of the newspaper Italia Oggi , tells of his infantryman father in the First World War who was jailed for shouting "Merry Christmas!" in German to the Austrian enemies from the trench at Motta di Livenza
"You come down from the stars / o king of heaven / and come to a cave / in the cold and frost …". A few notes and a handful of words are enough to build a cocoon of warmth, a nest of hope, a disposition for good things, a boost to brotherhood with near and far.
It is the magic of Christmas that is renewed every year in the unhardened hearts of people of good will. People who do not want to impose anything on anyone, nor prevent others from celebrating their faith in the ways they want, but who want to experience, together with those who share them, the rites and events that are part of their millenary history.
My father, a very young infantryman, not yet twenty, who was rotting at the front, in the mud of a trench of the First World War, was punished with 15 days in prison. The charge was: "Fraternization with the enemy". He was guilty of having shouted several times, on Christmas Eve, in German, to the Austrian trench which was less than 50 meters from his own: "Frohe weihnachten!" Merry Christmas! For him that "Merry Christmas!" it was a wish and a hope.
On that night of 1916, so cold, so dark, boys like him, violently torn from their homes to please the European ruling houses that were quarreling, and sent to kill each other, could not help but become tender. Of course, that wish would not have stopped, unfortunately, not even that night, the bullets. But it communicated a hope, a tenderness, a brotherhood, despite everything.
I was fascinated by this story of "Merry Christmas" in German (they were the first words in German I learned when I was still in kindergarten). That seemed to me a fairy tale. It happened, however, not in distant kingdoms or in remote times, but a stone's throw from me, even to my father, of whom, moved, I clutched the wooden arm that was in place of his real arm which, mowed down by an Austro-Hungarian machine gun when he was only 19 years old, on a plain near Motta di Livenza, he was then buried at the front.
"With that wish happily shouted in the night", my father explained to me, "I wanted to say to the so-called enemies of my same age who stood in front of me, numb like me, scared like me, lost like me, I meant that we are all boys , that we would all like to be at home on this holy night, that we would all like to embrace each other throwing our helmets in the air, telling us joyfully that the war is over, that the nightmare was over ”. It was to put an end to wars and hatreds, even personal ones, that a child had been born in Bethlehem almost two thousand years earlier. A child who, not only for Christians, but for everyone, has upset the world, has changed it at its root, profoundly and for the better.
In fact, Christ (and I say this as a chronicler, not as a believer) is the one who said that all men are equal; that slavery is inconceivable; that woman has the same dignity as man because she is a person and, like all people, she is unique and unrepeatable; which introduced the secular state ("give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God").
Christ, even if he is considered with the secular and cold eyes of the agnostic (and not with those favorable and affectionate to him of the believer), is an authentic and immense watershed in the course of history.
The equality of the people, the freedom of the people, the separation between the State and the Church which now (but certainly not, unfortunately, all over the world) seem obvious principles, 2012 years ago were genuine heresies.
Reading the history of the world as divided by the watershed of "before and after Christ" is therefore not a fideistic homage to Christ, but a simple historical observation. The homage to the documented truth of the facts.
But when, in the mid-fifties, my sister Emilietta and I, two years older than me, and a little more than decades both, were making the crib, we did not have this knowledge.
We only liked (and very much) the story of the Baby Jesus placed in a manger while the Magi were traveling to pay homage to him with their gifts, following the comet and the shepherds, more attentive, also because they are closer, carrying the lambs on their shoulders. , approached the cave dazzled with amazement.
The rule, then dictated by economic reasons, but later equally shared also by my children and then, now, by my grandchildren, was that the crib was not bought but built.
The approximate statuettes were made of mud, in the countryside, since the previous summer and were then placed to cook in the light of the July sun, the one that stunned you, so hot it was.
To make them stand, they tried, with various stylistic tricks, so to speak, never to isolate the arms from the body. And the legs were also pushed together to make them more solid. We then colored the statuettes approximately with cheap watercolors that Aunt Paola, a long-time elementary teacher and a young lady out of determination as well as our accomplice, bought at the Upim in via XX Settembre in Piacenza. The cave was built from pieces of stove wood leaning against each other. Then there were the ponds made with mirrors stolen from the mother who pretended not to have noticed.
The most useful ingredient, however, was musk because, like parmesan cheese on spaghetti, it was distributed over everything. On this point, between me, more hasty even then, and my sister, more meticulous and dutiful, there was profound dissension: I went to look for the moss that grew on the banks of the irrigation canals. It was a tall moss, almost green fur. With little effort, he took a lot home. But it was also a coarse and above all damp moss with a base of sodden earth. It lasted a short time and smeared a lot.
My sister Emilietta, on the other hand, wanting to do things right and that lasted, brought home only the moss that grew on the base of the mulberry tree trunks, which were then very numerous. On these trunks, however, the moss was little, low, difficult to tear. In short. Once brought home, however, it did not drag the wet earth with it, it adapted to quality and detailed coatings and then, being dry, it could also be used the following year. However, even if I never knew why, however carefully it was set aside the following year, the moss was never found.
The crib was an exciting concern that lasted several months. Each year it was enriched with some new solution. And as for the Sunday cyclists who, amazed and a little jealous, go to see the Giro d'Italia on Pordoi or Falzarego, we too, small country nativity scenes, had, every year, a destination of excellence which we do not we were never satisfied. A sort of trade fair for nativity scenes. The Manhattan of moss and lights. A bath in wonder and amazement. It was the mobile crib of the Piacenza church of San Carlo in via Torta, a street that made me hungry.
Also for this event we were preparing in time. We never asked when we were going. But we knew we were going to go. The day before, probably without even knowing that we were all waiting, our mother told us: “Tomorrow, children, let's go and see the Piacenza crib”. The five of us, then, would leave with our mother by taking the Sea bus. And this was already an event, to be enjoyed in all its details. We arrived in Piacenza in Piazza Cittadella and, on foot, we went to San Carlo, where we had to queue, so many were the people who wanted to see the crib which was immense. Or so, at least, it seemed to me. There was a lot of things to see but you had to hurry as people pushed. The statues, in the darkness of a late night, stalked and trembled (because the rails on which they slid were not the best).
In a matter of minutes we passed from the dense night, in which only a few lights could be seen, to the pink dawn, to the laborious and dazzling noon, to sunset. In the night, after all, you could see a sort of reddish flash and then, like a ferret, a devil appeared that must have been terrible (in fact the little girls were doing oh, putting their hand in front of their mouth) but that to me (and this impression is not I communicated it to no one, of course) it just seemed naughty. In fact, he resembled the puppet Sandrone, the one who had the stick to use on the head of his opponents which, in practice, was incorporated in his arms intertwined on his chest so that, to beat the blows, he had to turn on himself, left and right. And, splash, who is there, is there. Without discounts for anyone.
I also liked the devil because, being a flicker, I could never see him well: he appeared, and immediately disappeared. And, to see it again and possibly better, one had to let another cycle of dawns and twilights pass as the audience pressed and my mother grew impatient.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/il-mio-buon-natale/ on Sat, 25 Dec 2021 06:07:19 +0000.