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In the country of the "Little Saints"
-Robert Arnoux

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Local

Marseilles Santon Fair, on the Canebière until 31 December, has been held every Christmas season since 1803.

The baker and the well digger, the knife grinder, the country priest and the Announcing Angel Boufareù are by now an integral part of the Nativity Scene.

Two centuries ago, in 1794, an edict of the Convention, one of the political bodies born out of the French Revolution, expressly forbade public expressions of faith. Churches were closed and participating in a live Nativity scene, a Christmas tradition dating back to the early Middle Ages, became liable to punishment.

For several centuries, in churches and on the stage, simple folk had dressed as Joseph, Mary, the Angel, the Three Kings, and re-enacted the birth of the infant Jesus warmed by the breath of the ox and donkey in the Bethlehem manger. Now people had no choice but to do it in hiding, in the privacy of their homes.

Of course, there was much less room in a house than in a church and live Nativity scenes, especially in Provence, were progressively abandoned and replaced with miniature "cribs" and "crèches" with wood or clay characters. This was how the use of "Santons" originated. These are the "little saints" who play such an important part in this region's Christmas traditions.

But in Provence, something else happened. By the mid-19th century; a far-reaching movement developed, political and literary, aimed at reviving the local language and culture. One of its leaders, Frédéric Mistral, who was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904, considered provençal as "the first literary language of civilised Europe."

Christmas traditions were a big part of this revival. Soon, new clay characters, typical of Provence rural life, appeared in the crèche: the baker and the well digger, the knife grinder, the country priest, the Gypsy, the "Ravi" — a village idiot — and an Announcing Angel bearing the provençal name "Boufareù", meaning "The one who blows" (the trumpet).

These characters have become an integral part of the Nativity scene that every family, whether religious or not, places at the foot of the Christmas tree. One can meet them all, in various sizes and styles, at the Santon Fairs that are organized throughout Provence in the last weeks of December. Marseilles "Foire aux Santons" - the largest and most famous of all — has been held every single Christmas season since 1803.

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