When Advent Ends and All Creation Stirs

Detail of the Neapolitan Baroque crèche at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, showing the Holy Family, various animals, and putti

Gloria in excelsis Deo

As Advent’s long austerity loosens its grip, the world exhales. The fast is broken, the bells awaken, and the Church passes from shadow and restraint into an eruption of gold—light and song reclaiming the dark. In traditional Duosiciliano homes, kitchens glow late into the night as families and friends await La Vigilia: a sea-born feast of abundance, memory, and asceticism at last rewarded.

Angels are abroad tonight, heralding the coming Christ. The spirits of field and threshold grow still. Even the old, half-remembered fair folk of story and memory fall silent before a Presence older—and more terrible in its gentleness—than any they have known.

In Christian imagination, all creation recognizes the Nativity. The ox and the ass knew their Lord before kings and magi did; the animals of the manger bore witness while men slept. On this night—as with the Vigil of the Epiphany—it is said that mute recognition is briefly given voice.

Folk memory places the moment precisely at midnight—the very hour the Gloria breaks forth and Heaven draws near. Then the animals are granted voices long denied them. In farmyards and stables, dogs, birds, and beasts of burden stir, turning toward one another, murmuring not for human ears but in recognition of the Child who lies hidden and yet reigns.

Woe to the man who listens. This knowledge is reserved for the innocent and the untainted. The beasts’ speech is low and fleeting, exchanged only between creatures who cannot sin; to overhear it is to trespass upon a mystery not meant for fallen ears, and every telling warns of severe consequences: madness, illness, or death.

By morning, the voices are gone. The beasts return to silence. Men wake to Mass, to feast, to warmth and gaiety, unaware of what passed while they slept. But the old saying remains: on Christmas Eve, the animals speak—and the wise do not listen.

From all of us at Il Regno, a holy and blessed Christmas.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, December 23rd, Feast of Blessed Nicholas Factor