Christmas gingerbread
The depiction of the Nativity on gingerbread is one of the traditional images associated with Christmas. Gingerbread biscuits, traditionally made with honey, have long been made as gifts during Advent, which is hardly surprising given the widespread practice of beekeeping in many parts of present-day Slovenia. The earliest forms of gingerbread were decorated by hand or made by pressing the thick honey dough into wooden moulds. From these beginnings developed the craft known as lect-making (the name deriving from the Austrian German Lebzelt, meaning a type of flat cake), which simplified the production process, with the surfaces of the gingerbread decorated with sugar icing applied from piping bags. With the spread of the custom of putting up Christmas trees which occurred relatively late in both towns and villages lect gingerbreads became a common decoration. Even today, lect-makers and chandlers sell decorated gingerbreads at their Christmas stalls, to hang on Christmas trees and help create the magic of the festive season.
Christmas cribs a depiction of Christ’s Nativity
There are many different artistic representations of the Nativity in the history of art. The most common are frescoes, but there are also paintings and sculptures. A distinct category is the arranged scene of the birth of Christ with human figures, animals (especially sheep, together with the ox and the ass) and the Star of Bethlehem collectively known as a crib or Nativity scene. Pictorial representations, therefore, are not cribs, although some collectors and researchers wrongly interpret them as such and include them in the development of crib- making. The making of cribs began to develop in the second half of the sixteenth century, in Portugal. The first Christmas cribs in Slovenia were in towns and castles.
It was not until the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century that this creative activity began to be widespread in rural areas, giving rise to a wide variety of typological variants. In 2001 the Society of Nativity Scene Enthusiasts was established. It is based in Brezje, where the Nativity Museum is also located.
Janez Bogataj
