Lecce: Christmas decorations

This is the best presepio I've ever seen. The Nativity scene fills the entire Roman amphitheater in Lecce.

Which leads me to an observation made by Bill about Italian presepi and Where's Waldo. The presepi are very complex arrangements, each one different, and not always in a setting contemporaneous with the birth of Christ. Because of their complexity it is often hard to find the Holy Family and the Baby Jesus, hence, Bill's comparison with Where's Waldo.

But back to this particular Nativity scene, the Roman amphitheater provides the perfect backdrop for the Christmas story.

And there's baby Jesus. Do you see the manger?

I'm not sure there were elephants in the Gospel story, but the character on the elephant seemed Christmassy to me, so that's why the picture appears in this blog.

And Christmas lights--Lecce seemed to be into stars compared with Roma's strings of lights.

This star looked like it was embedded in the side of a building.

This tree was located in the piazza in front of the cathedral.

The biggest tree, however, was located in the center of the main piazza in town. Bill and I were curious about those vertical bars hanging from wires.

Here is the tree lit up at twilight. Actually, the rows of lights were on timers and lit up sequentially until the entire tree was illuminated.

Here is a video of the tree and of those bar lights we saw. Bill loved the vertical lights. I apologize for the fact that the video is on its side--don't know how to rectify that.