Provençal Pastorales & the Pastrage

What a pastorale is

A pastorale is a folk play in the Provençal language that tells the story of Christmas night as a village lives it. The angel brings the news, the villagers wake up, argue, hesitate, then set off for the stable. The last scene is everyone kneeling before the Christ Child.

It isn’t a solemn medieval religious drama. It’s village theater, performed by amateurs, with comedy, songs and prayer all mixed together. There’s a lot of laughter (mostly from the characters’ squabbling and bragging), and it ends on a moving note. The formula has worked for almost two centuries. Think of it as the Provençal cousin of the church Christmas pageant, with a lot more jokes.

See also the glossary.

The Pastorale Maurel

Written in Marseille in 1844 by Antoine Maurel, it’s the most performed pastorale, and the one that made many of the characters famous.

Its success comes down to one choice: instead of biblical shepherds, Maurel put the people of his own time and town on stage. The miller, the fishwife, the knife grinder, the Bohemian, the blind man, the bragging farmhand. The audience sees itself, laughs at the neighbors, and ends up at the manger right alongside them.

There are other pastorales too (Audibert’s in particular), and every theater group adds its own changes, cuts and local touches. There’s no single official version, which is a sure sign of a play that belongs to the people.

The characters, and what they do

As santons they stand still, but on stage each one has a role and a story.

The ravi

The man stunned by the news, arms raised to the sky. He isn’t in the usual cast list of the Pastorale Maurel, but he belongs to the same world. Often seen as the village simpleton, he’s really the one who reacts to the news as it deserves while everyone else is still talking.

Pistachié

The bragging, chatty farmhand and the play’s main source of laughs: he makes promises, he boasts, then he chickens out.

The boumian

The Bohemian, suspected of stealing and kept at arm’s length by the village. His change of heart and his joining the procession are one of the play’s storylines. Looking back, he’s also the character who reveals the most about the prejudices of the time it was written.

The blind man and his son

The old man led by a child, who gets his sight back when they reach the stable. It’s the most moving moment in any pastorale.

The tambourin player

He plays the galoubet (a three-hole pipe) and the tambourin (a long drum). He keeps the beat as the villagers march and plays during scene changes.

Margarido, Jourdan, Roustido…

The old couple, the farmer, the village rich man: a whole lineup of familiar types, with their family squabbles.

Once you know this, arranging your figures becomes more than decorating: each character has a place in the story. That’s what how to set up a nativity scene explains.

Why it worked

There are three reasons, and they also explain why the Provençal crèche is so much more crowded than other traditions.

1. The theater supplied a cast

   The plays gave santon makers a cast everyone already knew. Village santons existed before Maurel’s play, but the pastorales gave many of them names, personalities and poses people recognized. A santon isn’t just a figurine. It’s a character.

2. The language

   The pastorale was performed in Provençal just as fewer and fewer people spoke it, so it helped keep the language alive as well as entertaining people. That gave it an importance an ordinary Christmas play wouldn’t have had.

3. The village saw itself

   The Provençal crèche is a portrait of the whole village. That sets it apart from Alpine nativities, which focus on the Holy Family, and makes it close to the Neapolitan presepe, which does the same thing with a city.

The pastrage

This is a separate tradition, older than the pastorale: a lamb is offered during Midnight Mass.

Shepherds in traditional dress bring a lamb up to the altar, often in a little cart decorated with flowers and pulled by a ram, while the galoubet and tambourin play. The lamb is offered, not sacrificed. The ceremony is in Provençal or in a mix of Provençal and French, and it’s part of the Mass itself, not a separate event.

It’s like a living nativity inside the Mass. Several villages in Provence still keep it, especially Les Baux-de-Provence, and others do depending on the year and the parish.

See also the glossary.

Where to see them

Pastorales are performed every winter, usually from late November to early February, in town halls, theaters and churches across Provence, and sometimes much farther away, wherever Provençal cultural groups have put down roots.

Shows are announced locally and dates change every year, so we don’t list them. Check with town halls, tourist offices and Provençal cultural groups.

A tip if you don’t speak Provençal: the comedy comes through in the acting, and you already know how the story goes. You’ll follow along easily, and you’ll never look at the figures in your own nativity the same way again.