Margarido - Woman on a Donkey - the Eighth (8th) Essential Santon for a Provençal Creche

Posted on October 21, 2013 | 0 Comments

Margarido, The Woman on a Donkey – Femme sur l’ane (French) – is number 8 on the list of the top 20 Essential Santons for a Provençal Creche. She is available in all four Marcel Carbonel Santons sizes offered by My Growing Traditions.

Stemming from the early Christmas play, the Pastorale of Antoine Maurel, Margarido and her husband, Mr. Jourdan, are symbols of the middle class. She is infamous as a woman with a very bad temper, a gossip, and one who nags her husband. In the Pastorale, Roustido belatedly, as a latecomer, and in the middle of the night, beckons the couple to scurry to the Stable. There exist other references to Margarido arriving early at the Stable, literally travelling on the heels of the shepherds (the first to hear the angel's cry). Either way, Margarido comfortably and proudly rides her donkey, while trying to hurry along her husband as he trudges along beside them. Daniel Foley compares her to an "old duchess."

To shelter herself from the sun, she wears a wide-brimmed black hat over her white lace headdress and carries a basket filled with an offering, perhaps a gift from her garden or a cake, for the Christ Child.

Posted in Carbonel Santons, Provence Christmas

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