Save the santons

Reading the news on a facebook wall might make you think, this year, that France is on the verge of a religious civil war - which will with no doubt spread in Occident.

I started, this month, with the affair of the nativity scenes. The municipality of Béziers and the department of Vendée were summoned to retire the scenes set in public halls, on the basis of the laws establishing laicity and separation of the church and the State since 1905. The medias and the public opinion vehemently discussed about it. Without knowing much, and exagerating the problem. Traditionnal nativities scenes are allowed in public buildings. The mayor of Béziers might have set up an occitan crèche, which isn't considered as a religious symbol. It depicts the life in a village, with traditionnal caracters, houses, clothes. Caracters: butcher, flower seller, baker, smith, shoemaker, carpenter, weaver... You also see lou ravi (the idiot), the gipsy dancers and musicians, the lovers Mireille and Vincent... Mireille is the heroin of a poem written in 1859, in occitan, by Frédéric Mistral (who received the Nobel price for Litterature in 1904). She fell in love in the Baux de Provence, with a poor man. Her rich parents didn't allow her to marry Vincent. She flew away to Camargue and let herself die in the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Charles Gounod adapted the story in his 1863 opera, and it inspired a 1933 movie.

In such enlarged nativity scenes, the nativity is quite secondary... The name of the figurines, 'santons' means 'little saints', but the villagers, gipsies, animals, are not considered as saints.

Setting up scenes focused on nativity was a political provocation. In Montpellier, you would see traditionnal scenes at the xmas market, in occitan associations, and also probably in the churches. In a city or department hall, some xmas trees would have been quite enough. Yet it seems that the zealous mayor of Marseille removed the ancient traditionnal crèche years ago because it was already too religious for him. Moderation and culture are out of fashion.

Montpellier courageously (though there was no contestation) kept its yearly santon's fair. Santon's makers sell big and small santons, some dressed up with fabrics, some painted, some unpainted - great for amateur artists! I am far from being christian, but I enjoyed, long ago, painting elegant ladies from Arles.

The santon-makers are now threatened by the sino-american decorative fashions, the globalization and loss of rooting, the mexican portable nativity scenes, the design plastic nativities (Presepe, edited by Alessi), the chineese copies (made on resin), the crisis... The famous santonnier Carbonel anounced he planed to delocalize a part of his production in Tunisia. Will the Tunisians replace the ladies hairdress or straw hats by some veils? Hum. The santonniers should know that small is beautifull, and let the quality prime on international development...