With her spirited nativity scene, a Colombian woman continues tradition
Minneapolis Star Tribune, 16 December 1999
By Connie Nelson
Rosita Balch reaches in her coat pocket, but instead of a set of keys, her fingers close around three tiny pebbles. She pulls them out and cradles them in the palm of her hand.
"Look at these!" she exclaims. "Aren't they beautiful? They'll be perfect for the pesebre!"
This time of year, it's not unusual for Balch's pockets to be bulging with pebbles, sticks, clippings of dried weeds or faded flowers, anything that she can use in the elaborate nativity scene she constructs in her home each holiday season.
Known as a pesebre in her native Colombia, the display takes up the lion's share of her south Minneapolis living room and countless hours of her attention. It also forms the cornerstone of her Christmas.
For Balch, assembling the bold, colorful, eclectic pesebre is a labor of love, an act of faith and -- like Christmas itself -- a call for renewal.
"The idea is to make a replica of the little town where everyone welcomes Jesus," she said. "You are asking the Creator to bless this little town. Your spirit is asking for blessing, for change, for peace. To me, it represents the perfect world. It's like a dreamland -- and you do it with so much love."
Ever since she can remember, Balch has had a hand in assembling such a dreamland. When she was a child in Bogota, she and her brothers and sisters would work under the direction of their mother.
First, they would clear out a space in their home, then the family would create the sky of paper painted a brilliant blue, accented with a field of silvery stars. Next would come the ground -- a layer of brown paper covered with moss that the children had collected from the mountains. Finally, they would start to unpack box after box of tiny figurines, each carefully labeled -- "river," "marketplace" or "manger."
The pesebre had to be completed by Dec. 16, when the traditional Colombian nine days of prayer would begin. Until Christmas Eve, families would invite relatives, friends and neighbors into their homes to view their pesebres, pray together, then sample a dessert, sing villancicos (Spanish Christmas carols) and perhaps dance.
On Christmas Eve, the climax of the festivities, children were sent to bed early only to be awakened for the arrival of the baby Jesus, who might leave a small gift under the bed. After attending mass or praying together in their homes, there would be a joyful celebration that would sometimes last until dawn.
During that festive time, the pesebre reflected the building excitement. The Three Wise Men, initially placed as far from the manger as possible, would be moved closer each day until they would "arrive" at the manger on Jan. 6, the feast of the Epiphany. And in most pesebres, the manger itself would remain empty or the baby Jesus figurine -- usually the most exquisite of all the figurines -- would be covered until Christmas Eve.
"We were always tight of money, especially at Christmas, but those are my best memories," said Balch of her childhood holidays. "I don't miss presents and I don't even miss the food now, but I miss the dancing. We had problems in our country, but we danced."
Though singing and dancing are all too rare in her holiday celebrations these days, Balch still says her prayers and always puts up a pesebre. In fact, she has never spent a Christmas without one. When she lived in Japan briefly, her mother sent her a handful of figurines so she could create a makeshift pesebre. And when she first came to the United States in 1991, her former husband lent a hand by building a lighted manger.
That manger still is a part of the pesebre, even though the display changes from year to year. Just as many people add a few ornaments each year when they trim the tree, Balch collects a few new items to add to her city under the paper sky. Sometimes she shops in toy stores for miniatures, but more often than not, she finds inexpensive objects that can be put to use in the pesebre. And while her pesebre is integrated -- with figurines from Colombia, Guatemala, Norway and Japan -- she rarely uses pieces from American nativity scenes, mainly because they are too expensive.
Other American traditions, however, have become part of Balch's Christmas. There is a tree in the house ("because I like the smell," admitted Balch) and Santa Claus places presents under it as well as under the beds.
But the Christmas tree in Balch's living room can't compete with the showy pesebre. And Balch is determined to teach her 5-year-old daughter, Armonia, some Colombian traditions. Last year, mother and daughter teamed up to make the stars for the sky. This year, Balch let Armonia pick out a handful of favorite figurines for a pesebre of her own.
In putting up their nativity scenes, Balch and her daughter are taking part in one of the most universal Christmas traditions. Recreating the birth scene of Christ -- called a creche in France, a presepio in Italy and a yaselko in Poland -- is practiced by Christians around the globe, although the form differs from country to country and from family to family.
The practice is believed to date to the 1200s, when St. Francis of Assisi created a manger scene to make the story of Bethlehem more realistic to townspeople of Greccio, Italy.
A nativity scene may be very simple -- consisting of a manger with Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus -- or it may include an arkful of animals, entire towns packed with people, rivers teeming with with aquatic life, even planes, trains and automobiles.
Balch's pesebre has no buses, at least not this year. The colorful Colombian buses she has used in years past were ousted in favor of Guatemalan figurines she harvested from a wreath. The Guatemalans walk the roads (made of bran), shop at the marketplaces (there are two) or feed their chickens, sheep, goats, cows and pigs something that looks a lot like couscous. The Guatemalans cross the bridge over a river of cellophane, in which turtles, swans and dolphins swim. And, as Christmas nears, they will make the trek to the manger, which rests under a tinfoil star.
According to Balch, how elaborate a pesebre becomes "depends on your capacity of dreaming." And, by her own admission, Balch is a dreamer.
"The real world is hard, it is hard and if you don't dream...Some people go to therapy and others dream of a better moment, more peace, more balance." That is the dream Balch has, and the dream she wants to pass along to her child.
"It (the pesebre) keeps me, through my life, believing that there has to be a better moment," she said. "It's like a dream that I have. I want to give this to Armonia so that she has hope for a better world."
© 1999 Star Tribune
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