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THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA ONE-B DECEMBER 21. 1957. pHn sm IDe’re heading your way with a sleighful of good wishes for this festive season! May you and all your loved ones enjoy a happy holiday! P. O. BOX 1039 COLUMBUS, GA. cA special delight of the holiday season is the opportunity It beings to exchange greetings and good wishes with all our friends. We thoroughly enjoy the friendly relationship we have with you, our customers, and we’d like to express our grati tude for your valued patronage. A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all. j WILLIAMS CONSTRUCTION COMPANY Owned and Managed in the Chattahoochee Valley Since 1876 THE CHRISTMAS CRIB'S HISTORY worship of the Infant. They were said to receive the gift of speech at midnight on Christmas Eve. Christmas cribs were first con fined to churches and people brought gifts to the Infant Child, with the wealthy contributing jewels and robes for the cos tumes. Later hand-carved wood en figures came into use, many of them life size, and, as the popularity of the custom grew, there was great competition to pi-oduce the most elaborate and lavish manger scenes. Many of the great castles of Europe had their own chapels, and to provide a suitable manger scene nobles and kings hired the leading artists of the time to produce lavish creations. In this competitive spirit the artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries rose to the challenge and the settings took a great variety of forms. Many figures were added to the Na tivity scene, including represen tations of the nobleman who was financing the project, members of his household, and his serv ants. There were figures repre senting the various social class es, as well, all clad in the dress of the day, so that crib art be came a kind of contemporary so cial history as well as a new art medium. Movement was added to the figures' by some ingenious crafts men, and today some of the most famous examples of these Christ mas cribs may be seen in mu seums throughout Europe. One of the best known of these early cribs is now Rome in the Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damain. Forty-five feet long, twenty feet wide, and twenty- seven feet high, it includes sev eral hundred figures, all hand carved of wood; its sky has stars and a moon; there are the traditional angels and shepherds; the surrounding countryside in cludes trees, farm animals, and people performing their daily tasks; there ai’e buildings rang ing from an inn to a castle, and a thousand other details. Many families also made their own Christmas cribs and, in southern Italy particularly, the Christmas festivities centered around these home creations. In Italy it is called the “Pre- sepe” from the Latin praesepio, which means stable. In France it is the Creche: in Germany the Krippe; ,in Spain the Nacimiento. Wherever Christmas is celebrated today, there is a Christmas crib. The Chirstmas crib was brought to America by the various immi grants who came to settle here. But there is one city in America which has become famous for its distinctive Christmas crib tradi tion — Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, appropriately named and now known as the Christmas City of America. It was Christmas Eve, in 1741, that Nicholas Louis, the Count of Zingerdorf, and a group of Mora vian pioneers, seeking the reli gious freedom of the New World, named their settlement after the birthplace of Christ. With them they brought their “Putz” tradition — the elaborate manger scenes carved of wood which have been handed down from generation to generation now, and- which are still being improved as each family makes its contribution. The most inspiring of these is the Community Putz which tells the Christmas story in seven (Contiued on Page 14-B) Following is a chapter from a new book of authentic Christmas customs and decorations called, “A New Look at Christmas Dec orations” —- Bruce Publishing Company. It was the absence of books and the illiteracy of the times which prompted St. Francis of Assisi in 1224 to dramatize the birthday of Jesus with the first manger scene. In his desire to bring home to the people of the little village of Gi-eccio a realization of the hum ble beginnings of Christ and the significance of Christmas, he re constructed the Bethlehem scene in a cave, using live animals and people to illustrate the Nativity. The vividness of this experi ence, bringing the first Christ mas to life, was so appealing that the idea spread throughout Italy, and then to Spain, France, Ger many, and the entire Christian world. At first those annual manger scenes continued to use live do mestic animals and, as a result, began the legend that at Christ mas time all animals joined in the