Envoy’s wife retells a Christmas story

By Philip Iglauer

The Christmas season is upon us. Seoul’s wide boulevards are decorated with colorful holiday lights, there's a sharp chill air and snow on the ground, and frenetic shoppers throng the department stores.

But surely this is not what Christmas is all about.

Christians believe that Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary as a fulfillment of the Old Testament’s messianic prophecy. The birth of this messiah is wrapped in layers of meaning, including concepts of eternal salvation and worldly humility and charity.

Many Christians around the world recreate the birth of Jesus in a nativity scene to hang on to that core meaning of Christmas.

While the term "nativity scene" typically includes depictions in prints or with figurines, they are also depicted in "living nativity scenes" in which real humans and animals participate.

“(Italians) try to recreate this scene with actors, and especially demonstrate the scene through midnight mass and on Christmas Day, so people can feel the living message through this demonstration of the nativity with living actors,” said Maria Giovanna Mercuri, wife of the Italian Ambassador to Korea Sergio Mercuri.

Through this re-telling in pantomime of the story of the birth of Jesus, the nativity scene became important for Christians around the world to remind them of the real message of Christmas.

Mercuri said Christmas in Korea, and the customs that accompany the holiday, was not always as popular as it appears today.

She knows because she and her ambassador-husband lived in Korea in the late 1980s, when he was posted here as 1st secretary at the Italian Embassy in Korea.

“Christmas here was almost ignored back then,” Mercuri said in an interview with The Korea Times at her residence in Hannam-dong, a neighborhood of Seoul now, as then, peppered with diplomatic missions and envoy residences.

“We tried to find Christmas decorations in Dongdaemun (Market), but we couldn’t find any. Of course now Christmas is more widely known, we are told it is because there are many more Christians here in Korea,” she said.

She tried to recreate an Italian Christmas for her family back then.

“We were very young at the time, and we didn’t know anything about Korea, but here we were,” she said. “We had arrived in a totally different country.”

“The house (the ambassadorial residence) is the same, but what has changed is the world outside this house,” she said, in the one-hour interview at her house decorated with art and furniture she bought during that first time she lived in Seoul 25 years ago. “When we look to the other side of the river, we can really see the immense changes in Korea. 25 years is a lot for a person, but in the history of a country, it is not very long.”

“We cannot find now anything of what I recall. The small villas here have transformed into high-rise apartments,” she said.

A nativity scene takes its inspiration from the accounts of the birth of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Luke's narrative describes an angel announcing the birth of Jesus to shepherds who then visit the humble site where Jesus is found lying in a manger, a trough for cattle feed. Matthew's narrative tells of "wise men" who follow a star to the “house” where Jesus dwelt.

Eventually, statues replaced human and animal participants, and static scenes grew to elaborate affairs with richly robed figurines placed in intricate landscape settings.

“Do you know who invented the nativity scene? The Italians,” she said with mock pride. “The nativity scene was first created by St. Francis in the 13th century on Christmas night in the country side of Umbria.”

Saint Francis of Assisi is credited with creating the first nativity scene in 1223 to cultivate the worship of Christ, having been inspired by his recent visit to the Holy Land where he had been shown Jesus's traditional birthplace.

“It is very obvious to be Catholic in Italy, Mercuri said. “This is a social event. I do it as a familiar custom. Everybody does it especially if you have children.”

In the early-to-mid 4th century, the Western Christian Church placed Christmas on Dec. 25. One theory to explain that choice says it was selected to coincide with either the date of the Roman winter solstice or of some winter festival.

“The Christmas we have in Italy has Latin roots. ‘Sol Invictus,’ the Invincible Sun. Christians built Christmas around this occasion,” said Mercuri who has two PhDs specializing in the study of classical Latin and ancient Greek. “Believing in the sun and believing in god is not so different.”

Mercuri was a former director at the Library of the Jesuits, now the cultural heritage in Rome.

“The word ‘Sol Invictus’ was also one of the many titles of the Roman emperor,” she said. “Many Roman temples were on hills facing East in the direction of the rising sun. Some of them became churches, and those churches also face East.”

She said she remembers that first Christmas in Korea fondly. “The bond was very deep because there were few of us, with the aim to re-create our customs here,” she said. “Dinner was at our house here in the UN Village area.”

This Christmas however will not be spent here. Mercuri returned to Italy with her husband for a few weeks through the holidays on Dec. 13.