The Pétanque Player

What you see

A man in everyday clothes (shirt, vest, cap or hat), caught mid-throw: crouching to aim, leaning in to shoot, or standing with the boules at his hip. He’s one of the liveliest santons, because he’s frozen in motion while most others just stand.

Workshops make lots of versions: the shooter, the pointer, a seated player watching, a child playing, and sometimes the whole court sold as a set, complete with the jack (the small target ball) and the tape measure.

Why boules in a nativity

It’s a fair question, and the answer says a lot. The Provençal nativity isn’t a re-creation of Bethlehem. It’s a 19th-century Provençal village gathered around the stable. Jean-Louis Lagnel, who first mass-produced santons, is said to have modeled them on his own neighbors and their trades. That’s why santons wear 19th-century clothes and do what real villagers did.

So everything that makes up village life belongs in the nativity: the bread oven, the mill, the washhouse, the cabin, the café, and the boules court, the heart of village social life. The boules player isn’t a modern gimmick or something for tourists. He fits right in with the tradition. (Think of the bocce courts in Italian-American neighborhoods, and you’ll get it.)

A quick note on terms, since you’ll see both. Jeu provençal is played with a three-step run-up before the throw. Pétanque, invented in La Ciotat in the early 20th century, is played with your feet together inside a circle. Santon makers show one or the other, and catalogs often mix up the two.

The question of his name

Several nativity characters get their names from the pastorales, the Christmas plays: Bartoumieu, Roustido, Margarido, Pistachié. You’ll often read that the boules player is called Sardine.

It’s a fun name and often repeated, but we haven’t found any source for it: no play, no workshop catalog that sells him under that name. Santon makers just call him by what he does: boules player, shooter, pointer. We mention it because you’ll run into it, but we don’t consider it established.

Where to place the court

The boules court goes on the village square, on flat ground, well away from the stable. It’s a slice of everyday life, not a scene of worship, so it doesn’t need to face the manger. In fact, it’s one of the few groups in the nativity clearly busy with something else.

Two practical tips. You need a truly flat surface with no moss or bumps, or the crouching santons will tip over. And leave open space around it: a boules court squeezed between two houses gets lost. For how to plan that space, see ground and terrain.

Frequently asked questions