To the Little and Simple Ones...
France – Provence
Marcel Carbonel
Setting – M. Forest and J. Barrish

The typical Provençal village is seen here from the sea. But this is a miniature edition. There exists in some countries a tradition to craft miniature crèches. Famous are the matchbox crèches of Peru and Saxony (Erzgebirge). There is one figure among these little people which begs for special attention. His name is "Le Ravi," and he usually stands in a remote area of the nativity scene. Both hands and arms are raised to heaven to express ravissement, meaning rapture. A farm hand, the boy is somewhat naive and simple-minded. But he is the only one in the whole village to manifest openly his guileless happiness on hearing the news of Jesus' birth. This moving character made its appearance at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Marseilles.