Pistachié – the Tenth (10th) Essential Santon for a Provençal Creche

Posted on November 20, 2013 | 0 Comments

Pistachié is number 10 on the list of the top 20 Essential Santons for a Provençal Creche. He is available in all four Marcel Carbonel Santons sizes offered by My Growing Traditions. He wears a cotton cap and has evidently dressed rather quickly as his trousers are held up by a single strap of his bracers. As the Carbonel Dictionary notes, he holds a lantern in one hand and a bucket in the other in Sizes #2, 1, and Puce, and a lantern and a broom in Size #3.

He is a figure drawn from numerous early Christmas plays, especially Antoine Maurel’s Pastorale, but others as well, and each portrays him with a slightly different personality. In the nativity he carries presents to the Christ Child. A farmhand, he is timid--even a little fearful--and not very bright, but he is jovial and a willing helping hand. In Maurel's Pastorale he adds comic relief to the play when it takes the entire village to rescue him after he falls into a well trying to fetch Margarido's donkey some water. And, he is renown for being a womanizer. His name, derives from the pistachio tree,