![]() ![]() Their construction is usually a big event and many people come to watch. It is also possible to find Nativity Scenes in public places like city councils, schools and even shopping centres. The nice thing about the Nativity Scene is that, although it is made up of the same component parts, the scenography is never the same as the figurines usually move about on the set, be it due to reasons of innovation or even just forgetting where you had placed them the year before. Recently, “multicultural” Nativity Scenes have become more fashionable whose figurines have been inspired by folklore from other countries, especially those in Africa and Latin America but it is certain that the majority of households continue to use plastic figurines that, in most cases, are more than a few years old. This was probably because the lights of the smaller streets are paid for by the neighbours or business owners of that particular area, whose tastes were normally more “conventional”.īehind closed doors, we Spanish are more traditional: in a lot of homes you will find a Nativity Scene. There were even cases where a main street would be decorated in a very modern fashion whilst the adjacent ones had the same traditional decorations as always. In cities like Madrid until relatively recently there was quite a large amount of controversy surrounding the Christmas lights, that were found to be too “avant-garde”. It is not known for sure if it is due to the modern day Spanish desire to be politically correct in everything they do – many people believe that some Christmas symbols can be offensive to other beliefs –, or because of the aspiration we currently have to disassociate ourselves with everything that is considered traditional and that is suddenly thought of as old and typical of an old-fashioned Spain. In some cities we will be able to see illuminations so abstract and colourful that they make us long for the traditional bells or holly leaves. ![]() Many visitors are surprised at their lack of “Christmas feeling”. However, there is a “contention” surrounding the “official” Christmas lights. Fortunately, the different city councils are a little more Christmas minded and turn on the decorative street lights only when we reach December. One of the first issues we might have when visiting Spain during the period between autumn and the beginning of winter is that in many places, especially supermarkets and department stores, the Christmas decorations have already been put up by mid-November. Now that we are in December we can definitively say that Christmas is just around the corner. By Catalina Suárez on Monday, December 10, 2012 ![]()
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