{"id":6141,"date":"2005-12-23T00:35:23","date_gmt":"2005-12-23T00:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/away-in-a-manger.html"},"modified":"2005-12-23T00:35:23","modified_gmt":"2005-12-23T00:35:23","slug":"away-in-a-manger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/away-in-a-manger.html","title":{"rendered":"Away in a Manger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Francis X. Rocca on Italy’s Nativity scenes<\/a> – <\/p>\n

Also called presepi<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> they are far more than just a stable and a few animals. They are social panoramas, often quite elaborate, and an essential part of Italian Christmas traditions:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

And yet, disturbing as all this sensuality may be to the Puritan who dwells inside every American (even one, like this writer, who was born and raised a Roman Catholic), the context lends it an authentically Christian meaning. The gospels teach that the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. He even dined with publicans and sinners. And Christmas has never been about just straw and swaddling clothes; it is also about gold, frankincense and myrrh. In their celebration of the carnal under the rubric of the redeemer’s birth, Italy’s spectacular cr\u00e8ches reflect the mystery of the incarnation. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Francis X. Rocca on Italy’s Nativity scenes – Also called presepi, they are far more than just a stable and a few animals. They are social panoramas, often quite elaborate, and an essential part of Italian Christmas traditions: And yet, disturbing as all this sensuality may be to the Puritan who dwells inside every American…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAway in a Manger - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/12\/away-in-a-manger.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Away in a Manger - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Francis X. Rocca on Italy’s Nativity scenes – Also called presepi, they are far more than just a stable and a few animals. 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Rocca on Italy’s Nativity scenes – Also called presepi, they are far more than just a stable and a few animals. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}