GRECCIO CELEBRATES FIRST CHRISTMAS CRIB

A special Christmas this year for the tiny town of Greccio. Eight hundred years ago, Francis of Assisi (not yet a saint but already a celebrated holy man, came to the remote peasant community of Greccio (nowadays on the border between Lazio region and Umbria). He had been advised that the quarrelsome local people were constantly at war with each other and he had been asked by the local landowner to pacify them. Francis was just back from a similar mission on a larger scale in the Holy Land, where he had tried to put an end to the Crusade that was waging at the time.

Francis, a man of infinite resources, thought up an idea that has subsequently been taken up all over the Christian world. In a grotto in the cliffside he set up the first Nativity scene, which so impressed the locals that they were apparently instantly converted to peaceful relationships.

Today, Greccio, numbered among the “most beautiful villages in Italy”, has only 40 fixed residents. But during the Christmas season, numbers of presences swell to 40-60 thousand as coachloads of visitors roll in to climb the 100 stone steps to the Nativity Grotto and wander through the maze of narrow corridors and tiny rooms that were the original living quarters of the Franciscan community. The local community pulls out all the stops to give these hordes of visitors a hearty welcome. The central piazza becomes a blaze of lights surrounding a Christmas market that is full of stalls selling handmade Christmas souvenirs, mostly made by the locals themselves.

These numbers are bound to swell for the coming special anniversary that will mark the first Christmas Crib St. Francis set up in the night of Christmas 1223.

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