Everything you need to know about Christmas crappers
Everything you need to know about Christmas Crappers
Surely not, I hear you say. Surely that’s one of those typical Spanish misprints of unfamiliar consonant combinations, like Johnny Deep and Jacob Rees-Moog. But as anyone who has spent Christmas in Catalonia will know, the Christmas Crapper is a key, if unobtrusive, element of any Nativity scene worth its salt, quietly doing his business (and it’s inevitably a he) at the back of the manger.
Like his close cousin the Shitting Log (yes, really), aka the caga tió, the caganer, as we will refer to him from now on, embodies the Catalan people’s earthy, pragmatic nature and love of all things scatological.
The exact origin of the caganer is lost in the mists of time, but the tradition has existed for at least three hundred years; according to the Friends of the Caganer society, the caganer is believed to have started appearing in nativity scenes in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. While he is essentially unique to Catalonia and neighbouring regions with a Catalan culture, such as Andorra, Valencia and southern France, caganers can also be found as far afield as Portugal (cagôes) and Naples (cacone).
The conventional explanation for the caganer is that he represents the circle of life and fertility – in other words, what has been taken from the earth is returned to it. The traditional caganer is always dressed in old-fashioned Catalan peasant garb: a pristine white shirt, black trousers, red cummerbund and the essential red beret, or barretina, and is often smoking a pipe. However, in modern times virtually every politician, dignitary, celebrity or figure of authority has been portrayed as a caganer, reflecting another very typically Catalan trait, which is to bring the mighty down to earth where they belong. Indeed, you need look no further than the Catalan-Aragonese Oath of Allegiance that used to be sworn by Catalan nobles and council leaders to their monarch back in the twelfth century and still epitomises the Catalan character today: “We, who are as good as you, swear to you, who are no better than us, to accept you as our king and sovereign, provided that you observe all our liberties and laws, but if not, not.”
The caganer is not supposed to be easy to locate in the Nativity scene, and children have always competed to be the first to spot him. This led to a huge outcry in Barcelona over Christmas 2005 when dozens of disconcerted locals failed to locate the caganer in the nativity scene outside Barcelona City Hall. It turned out that the city council had decided to do away with the caganer because a civil ordinance had made public defecation and urination illegal, hence the caganer was setting a bad example. As one outraged writer to the local newspaper thundered, “A nativity scene without a caganer is not a nativity scene.” Following widespread media criticism and a local campaign (Salvem el Caganer), the caganer was duly restored the following year.
One of the biggest producers of caganers in Catalonia can be found in Torroella de Montgrí. The company was founded by Anna María Pla in 1992, since when she has been joined by her two sons Sergi and Marc. New figurines this year include Kim Jong-Un, Theresa May and Dolors Bassà, the former Catalan Minister of Labour who has been incarcerated since March 2018 accused of sedition and rebellion in the wake of the Catalan declaration of independence last year. Along with the traditional caganer wearing his barretina, best sellers include former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, Barcelona FC legend Lionel Messi and, of course, Donald Trump, though this last figurine is not particularly representative given that more shit emits from his mouth than from his nether regions. The firm ships worldwide and prices start at €6. https://www.caganer.com/en/
Still in a scatological vein, we can hardly fail to mention the caga tió or Shitting Log. This cheery chappie is simply a section of log about 30 cm long with a smiling face painted on the front, a cork nose, and a little barretina perched at a jaunty angle. Starting from the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (8 December), the tió is parked in a corner of the living room, covered with a blanket so he won’t get cold, and given a little something to ‘eat’ every night. Children are encouraged to take good care of him to ensure that he will shit presents on Christmas Day. Come the day, the children beat the tió with sticks while singing a little song demanding that he shit their presents (which have been secreted under his blanket by the parents overnight). These are generally ‘stocking-filler’ type gifts, and might include candies, nuts, dried figs and túrron, as the bigger presents will be brought by the Three Kings on 6 January. You can buy caga tions at most supermarkets and garden centres from early December, though they are usually hugely overpriced so you might be better advised to get hold of a log and get creative!