We’re Dreaming of a Catalan Compost Christmas

It’s possible, though remotely so, there are a few regular readers who were not offended by our story last year on the Spanish Christmas tradition that gives a whole new meaning to the concept of the Yule log. That would have been the piece we wrote on the tio de nadal, or “crapping log”—ours of which not incidentally now occupies its own, special spot in our seasonally decorated home. Worth noting is that, also not incidentally, that special spot’s as far from the Christmas tree as our wife can make it.

(If you’re one of those who missed the story, don’t say we didn’t warn you, but you can find it here:

Many of those readers probably expressed relief at the thought that, distasteful as was the crapping Christmas log story, we had, at the very least, reached the deep space limits of holiday tastelessness. Vulgar as was that story, it had to be the nadir of potentially offensive Yuletide offerings, they concluded. It could not, they no doubt consoled themselves, get any worse.

But oh, dear friends. It can. Indeed, it can get much more tasteless.

As we were researching the history and lore of our feculent fir, we came across another Spanish tradition that makes the tio de nadal seem well, actually fairly normal. What we discovered was the caganer.

Let’s see; how to put this delicately?

Imagine the beloved crèche, the essential tabletop landscape of the season. There’s the infant Christ, of course. Mary, Joseph. A trio of potentates. A donkey or two. Cattle, and shepherds, and angels. And also there at the scene, well, there if the nativity scene is one from the Catalan region, or in lots of other places now in Spain, usually hidden off to the side or someplace else on the crèche tableau where he isn’t immediately obvious, is a little boy. Squatting. Pants around his ankles.

Look, there is no way to put this delicately.

He’s defecating.

Yeah, we’re guessing, unless she’s from Catalonia or didn’t heed the warning about the brown acid at Woodstock, your Grandma’s nativity scene doesn’t have this charming little figure.

Now, it’s important to add, and very quickly so, that this isn’t some kind of crude mockery of Christmas. We’ll grant you, the caganer is a little unusual. Okay, a lot unusual. But in fact, them more we read about the caganer, the more we liked it.

The idea behind the caganer is a reminder, a graphic one hundreds of years old in Catalonia, that the Incarnation was a real event, one that occurred at a real time. When it happened, there were cows in the stable, munching grain. There were shepherds abiding their flocks and “abiding” here meant being out in the dark, sleep-deprived, and sick of trying to keep together a bunch of animals more skittish than a gaggle of girls who think they just spotted Jusatin Bieber at the mall, and dumber than, well than a gaggle of girls who think they just spotted Justin Bieber at the mall. And yes, there were on that remarkable night people with their pants down, attending to the most fundamental of personal businesses. Angels were singing, true. It’s also true that people were pooping. The caganer is a reminder of that. The caganer humanizes an event that is often so romanticized as to become cliché.

(The use of earthy images to make Biblical stories more comprehensible is fairly common in northern European art, incidentally. One of Rembrandt’s early etchings shows the Good Samaritan delivering the robbed, beaten traveler he’s rescued to an inn and safety, and in the foreground squats a deuce dropping dog, which helps underscore the callous indifference of the world to such kindness. Robert Campin’s 15^th century triptych of The Annunciation (above) has Mary receiving news of her pregnancy via a tiny, cross-bearing angel spirited down on a filament of golden light, while Joseph, in the opposite panel, is crafting a simple wooden mousetrap, hence the painting’s famous nickname, “The Mousetrap Madonna.”)

The caganer in the nativity scene also reminds that God worked the Incarnation in His own time, in His own way. He didn’t give us notice of the moment. And if we happened to be otherwise occupied at the time, well, that’s part of the story as well.

Now, all that said, we still can’t get around the reality that this is one freaking odd addition to the old family crèche. And the Spanish, theological symbolism aside, have embraced the caganer with the same sort of enthusiasm we have for minor Christmas characters like Blitzen and Donner and the elves. Caganer figures are no longer doing their business discretely out behind the crèche stable. They’re everywhere at Christmas in Spain.

Just to give you an idea of the popularity of the caganer in Spanish Christmas traditions, in 2005, the city fathers of Barcelona abolished him in the city’s official crèche. Barcelonans—no way are we even going to try to resist this—nearly filled their pants in outrage. Protests were so virulent that the next year, the caganer was back at his business.

By 2010, Barcelona was regular once again, so to speak, celebrating with the erection of what Guinness has officially established as the world’s largest caganer (right). It was 19 feet tall, looking like Paul Bunyan as you probably never pictured him, squatting and clutching a pine tree in his fist, leaving one to wonder if he has plans for using the evergreen in what would be an extremely uncomfortable fashion.

On a more manageable scale, size-wise but no less really weird, has been the burgeoning popularity of caganer rendered into myriad personalities. New ones, along with old favorites, about five inches tall, are created for each Christmas season; collectors snap them up. At stores all over Spain, come December, you can get caganers that look like little pooping politicians, pop stars, and public personalities.

From Berlusconi to Bruni, practically every European political figure is available as a caganer. The royal wedding party, Kate, Andy, and a bearskin-be-hatted, bare backsided Royal House guardsman, are sold individually or as a lovely set. President Obama, Sarah Palin, and Hillary Clinton have all been immortalized in full squat mode as caganer. New and very hot this year: Mick Jagger, complete with his licking lips t-shirt, Dora Exploradora, and a Frosty the Snowman caganer (left), with, yes, snowy white poop. (Note to celebs: Think you’re cool just because you’ve been rendered into a bobblehead doll? Think again.)

If you’re like us Euro-chic types, you are perhaps already hip to the whole caganer concept. As we noted, the caganer is customarily hidden in the crèche scene so children can do a sort of disturbingly inappropriate “Where’s Waldo?” trying to spot him. If this is your first uh, exposure, to the caganer, well, obviously, it presents a whole lot of opportunities for the season at your house you probably haven’t thought of. Sure, for example, Martha Stewart’s gracious Connecticut estate is decorated this Christmas with a “Scandinavian-style greenery chandelier” and a tree festooned with “needle-felted woodland ornaments.” And her website gives directions for her own, hand-decorated crèche made entirely of home-baked gingerbread. But does Martha’s nativity scene have a Tiger Woods caganer, complete with ex-wife Elin’s one-iron in his hand? No, and that’s why Martha will forever be a sausage-fingered prole with no flair for the truly creative.

If the whimsical’s more your holiday style, for a mere 12 euro, not including shipping, a Betty Boop caganer can be on your mantel and you can wait for the hilarity that will ensue after one of your wittier Christmas guests remarks that, given what she’s doing, it’s really Betty…(ha, ha, ha.)

Should you be one of the more intellectual types, you can get caganer in the likenesses of Einstein, Picasso, Dali, or Gandhi.

And, of course, Elvis.

If you’re one of many at Christmastime who look around the house and see all that greenery and garland, all those ribbons and bows and wreaths and icicle-festooned boughs, but who say, “You know what’d really make these Christmas decorations complete would be a tabletop collection of the entire squad of the Barcelona soccer team, FC Barcelona, caganer-style,” your holiday decorating dream can come true. They’re available, all of them, including their best player Gerard Pique whose caganer actually comes with his current girlfriend, a Shakira singer caganer.

It occurs that at this point, we may as well stop because either you think we’re kidding or you are wondering just how you can get your hands on one of these and either way, just go to: www.caganer.com.

And that sister-in-law who’s always so hard to buy a present for? She is now taken care of, are we right?

You’re welcome.

Merry Christmas.