Santons and the new season

It’s getting to be time to be thinking about santons and setting up a crèche. Last weekend the santon fair began in earnest  in Le Thor, set up in the salle des fetes.

For those of you who do not know about this Provençal custom, santons are little figures made of red clay which are hand painted and are created by santonniers of which there are many and from different parts of Provence.

I have always loved having these darling little people at Christmas. They represent all of the “metiers” or professions from the region along with certain regular characters like the mayor of the village, the priest, a monk, the tambourinaire (musician) and of course Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus. It seems that every year there are new characters created by the santonniers and each have their own style so you can actually recognize if it comes from a certain santonnier. Sort of like art which it actually is!

Anyway, there was a great display in the salle des fetes along with a lottery, food and hot mulled wine. There was also a giant crèche set up

and a display of Solex bikes....the little motorized bikes that lots of French people used to ride ...Jean Claude had one to get to high school and you still see them around but not like before. To me they were like a beret and a baguette...very French!

We of course got tickets to the lottery and a few days later we got a phone call to tell us we had won! Here are our new santons! I’m keeping an eye on Jean Claude there!!!

The crèche set up is so important around here that even the garden store has a special section set up with all the little extras one might need to create a truly wonderful crèche. Moss, paper to look like rocks, little lanterns and fence kits etc. etc. I spent an hour at Bontanic, my favorite garden store, looking at all the great stuff.

Our full crèche is in Portland but we did get a few new items for our mantle in Provence. We got a santon to represent each of our lively grandchildren...I’ll post pictures of that later! À bientôt!