Your Christmas Crib is not Complete without THIS latest 2020-inspired Figurine!
The traditions of Christmas Cribs goes back decades and decades, often times going beyond the traditional setting, of showing the Nativity scene, with Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus, the animals, the angels, the shepherds, the sheep, and the Three Wise Men.
This is more apparent in the Neapolitan Cribs, in which non-biblical figurines appear. Naples is undoubtedly the most devoted city to the history and cult of cribs: indeed a 1025 document already reported about a church of Santa Maria ad praesepe (now lost) and again in 1324 a ‘chapel of the nativity scene at Di Alagni residence’ was mentioned as existing in the nearby Amalfi.
Pandemic-control measures have heavily dented peak sales season on Via San Gregorio Armeno, the Naples street celebrated for its Nativity scenes. REUTERS/Ciro De Luca For One Prized Italian Tradition, Covid-19 Deals Heartbreaking Blow
Artisans clustered along a Naples street have been crafting Nativity scenes for more than a century. But coronavirus restrictions and a dearth of tourists are threatening their survival.
By Dec. 12, 2020 5:35 am ET
NAPLES For generations, the Christmas season has brought throngs of visitors to Via San Gregorio Armeno, a historic street in the heart of Naples where artisans have made the city’s famous handcrafted Nativity scenes since the 1800s.
A mural of Diego Maradona painted in 1990 looks over a small piazza in Quartieri Spagnoli, a working-class district in the heart of Naples. Painted in blocks of flat colour, the Argentinian footballer is shown wearing the sky-blue SSC Napoli football kit, his black, Bacchic hair standing out against the crumbling
tufo stone of the apartment block. Photographs, paintings and posters of the star appear below the mural, the images accumulating from the moment Maradona led the Napoli football club to win two unprecedented league titles – first in 1987 and then in 1990. Since his death on 25 November, this square has become an impromptu site of national mourning.