A wonderful tradition in Italy is churches and communities making creative manger scenes and putting them on display through the Christmas season. These presepi, as manger scenes are called in Italy, originated 800 years ago just north of Rome, in Assisi. St. Francis was a master at teaching Bible lessons with clever props, and he figured out that a manger scene helped people relate to the Christmas message more vividly. Ever since then, the Baby Jesus has been shown on his day of birth in a humble setting, in local scenes that have not a hint of Bethlehem: an Italian setting for Italian viewers (or an Arctic scene for Eskimos) to connect more intimately with the story of the Nativity.
In Rome, it was a Bethlehem home show, as all over town creative crèches were on display. Here’s a collection of some of our favorites — ranging from holy to homemade to mod to igloos.
To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas. Today we travel to Italy.
In Rome, from Piazza Navona’s Christmas market to the ultimate manger scene in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, the city was bursting with Christmas traditions. The highlight was filming the Midnight Mass at the Vatican on Christmas Eve — which happened to be Pope John Paul II’s last Christmas.
One of my favorite guides in all of Europe is Roberto Bechi (who has taught and inspired our tour groups and guidebook readers visiting his Tuscan hometown of Siena for more than twenty years). Roberto worked his wonders and, with his connections, he had sacred music and prayer infusing the tranquil Italian landscape with the spirit of Christmas. With his help, we filmed living nativities recreating the town of Bethlehem in idyllic towns.
The logistics of this shoot were tricky. While it seemed we were everywhere on Christmas, we only actually shot Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Rome and in Salzburg. (Other “Christmas” celebrations you see were staged for our cameras a few days before the real thing.) And I was never actually on camera in England, France, or Italy. You’ll notice throughout that I established myself in each of those countries with “on-cameras” that could pass for those places. For example, the shot of me “in Rome” was actually in front of the cathedral of Salzburg, which was designed to be a one-quarter-scale knock-off of St. Peter’s — but in Austria. Forgive me, Father…for I have deceived.
To celebrate the season, I’m sharing clips, extras, and behind-the-scenes notes from Rick Steves’ European Christmas. Today we travel to Austria, where the festive swirl of heartwarming sights, sounds, and smells of Christmas abound. This is where the season’s most-loved carol, “Silent Night,” was first performed over 200 years ago.
We knew that filming an intimate family Christmas feast would not necessarily come out natural and fun-loving on TV, so we filmed two and picked the best. The Bavarian family the German Tourist Board lined up for us tried hard. But the evening just felt stiff. We spent long hours feasting and filming with them, but ended up with nothing usable.
Thankfully, just over the border, the traditional Austrian family we filmed the next night exceeded all hopes. They took me dashing through the snow in a two-horse open sleigh. By the way, as you watch this clip, imagine the stress of knowing that in 15 minutes, the light will be gone and the delightful sleigh bit will become unusable. We scrambled to reach their home late after a long day of filming and had to really keep things moving along — cutting the friendly welcomes (without being rude to the kind and eager people who have no idea how critical the fading light is), and getting the horses all in gear and clip-clopping merrily past the cameraman.
Then, at the door of their gingerbread-cute yet massive home, the entire family greeted us with a Christmas yodel. Inside their time-warp home, a classic grandma was making cookies with children you just had to pinch, an old Habsburg grandpa played the zither, Mom lit the advent wreath while teaching her child the significance of each candle, and Dad blessed the house from the attic to the barn with incense as his daughter sprinkled holy water with a sprig of spruce. (Part of my goal with this program was to explain the meaning behind some of our rituals — like the Advent wreath — in a traditional European context.) The parents secretly decorated the tree, placed the gifts, and lit the real candles. They rang the bell, and the kids tumbled into the room, filled with wonder. When our cameraman smiles as he films, I know we’re getting good footage.
Austria had its musical ups and downs. I was excited to experience the ritual reenactment of the first performance of “Silent Night” in Oberndorf, the village where it originated. We scrambled to get out there on Christmas Eve and set up at the several spots where events were taking place. But it was basically a muddy, touristy mess, with underwhelming music and not a hint of the magic we had naively hoped for. I managed to persuade the musicians to perform a private little concert for us in the church, so we at least filmed “Silent Night” as it was first performed (two guitars and two singers). My Christmas Eve dinner was the last two bratwursts on the griddle with a stale roll, snapped up just as they were closing down the tent.
Racing back into Salzburg to salvage something of Christmas Eve, we hiked to the abbey where Maria of “The Sound of Music” caused her fellow sisters to sing, “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” The sisters had agreed to let our crew be present at their holy Mass, but I guess they didn’t understand we wanted to actually use the big camera we lugged up the hill. When we got there, they said no camera — just a microphone. Our soundman carefully set up the microphone stand to the side of the altar facing the choir of nuns (as I sat in the back, happily humming “Climb Every Mountain”). Suddenly, the old but very spry Mother Superior dashed across the altar in the direction of the out-of-sight nuns’ choir. Seconds later, our sound man was evicted — dragging all his gear, along with his tail between his legs, out of that restricted holy zone. He had to set up the mic farther back in the nave, making the recording unusable.
Thankfully, the next day — Christmas morning — we were given a royal perch from which to shoot in the Salzburg cathedral as a huge orchestra and choir filled the place with a glorious Diabelli Mass.
Germany’s grandest Christmas market, in Nürnberg, comes complete with an angelic Christkind dressed in gold, played by a real-life teenage girl. After we filmed her show before an awestruck crowd of German kids, we were invited to a private audience with her. We felt like paparazzi trailing some teenage heartthrob.
In this clip of the interview, we learn how Martin Luther, the local reformer, wanted to shift the focus from St. Nicholas back to the Christ child. But as Germans had a hard time getting their mind around baby Jesus giving gifts, the Christmas gift-giver gradually morphed into a sweet girl.
When it comes to traditional holiday images, Germany’s Bavaria is the heartland. In this clip, we savor classic holiday themes: glittering trees, old-time carols, and colorful Christmas markets.
Even though I was determined to limit the shopping focus in the show, I couldn’t help but be impressed by Germany’s grandest Christmas market in Nürnberg. Like the region’s children, we were mesmerized with Nürnberg’s quirky, gift-giving Christmas angel, called the Christkind. In an auditorium with several hundred lovingly wonderstruck grade-schoolers, the Christkind held court. Filming the children mob her after she said, “If you’re very, very gentle, you can touch my wings,” was great TV. (Tomorrow, I’ll share a rare interview with this German Christmas angel.)