Christmas is a time to spread joy. Alex Johnson celebrates a character who shares something quite different during the festive season

It’s perhaps the ultimate in terms of cocking a snook at conventionality, a wee reminder of how little authority our authorities really have over us. And it all happens in the most traditional of settings, at Christmastime. Meet the smallest – and arguably the most impertinent – Idler Hero we’ve ever featured in this column, the caganer.

At this time of year many people in homes around the world set up their Nativity cribs, Mary and Joseph welcoming the Baby Jesus into the world, flanked by a mixture of angels, shepherds, and wise men, glory shining all around. Perhaps there’s a donkey in there too, and maybe a cow. In Catalonia, right at the back of this venerated diorama, you’ll also find a chirpy little chap with his black trousers round his ankles, defecating. He’s known as the caganer, a polite definition of which would be “the pooper”, and he’s an indispensable part of the pessebre, the Catalan Nativity scene. Traditionally this little clay figure wears the region’s signature barretina red cap, and is dressed as a simple peasant in a white shirt or smock, crouching down to do his business, sometimes smoking a pipe or reading a newspaper at the same time. Spanish Nativity scenes are significantly more sprawling than most British ones, with extensive landscaping, and the caganer is usually positioned behind a tree or perhaps under a bridge as a mark of respect, rather than up close and personal with the Holy Infant and his Mum and Dad.

His origins as a cast member of the Nativity are murky to say the least, but go back at least to the 17th century. As a church gargoyle or an image on tiles, he goes back even earlier. There are no claimants for his invention, he’s very much a subversive Everyman. Or indeed Everywoman. While the traditional caganer is still popular, each year sees a new batch of famous folk being caganerised. So while you can get versions as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk, Gollum, Shakespeare, and Mark Knopfler, you can also find Queen Elizabeth II, Shakira, Princess Leia, and Greta Thunberg. During the coronavirus lockdowns, a caganer wearing a face mask was naturally the order of the day.

Quite why the figure is there is still a mystery. It’s a fertilization ritual, runs one argument, not just to enrich Mother Earth but also to ensure the Nativity scene will flourish again the following year. The recent trend towards depicting the great and the good as caganers is surely the same kind of world-turned-upside-down release of anger as seen in the yearly bonfire effigies devoured by flames in Lewes on Guy Fawkes Night. Or perhaps it’s a Carry On Christmas-style wacky jape, something to smile at and show that it takes all sorts, a bit of a reality check in a world of commercialised falsity.

What it’s not about is blasphemy or any kind of Satanic nonsense. In fact, the only real modern controversy about the caganer came in 2005 when Barcelona city council’s annual Nativity in Plaça Sant Jaume left out the caganer (on the grounds it might encourage people to follow his lead in public) and only reinstated it following a massive public protest and media outcry.

Caganers are not widely available in the UK, though you can find them online if you’re still looking for a stocking filler for a loved one, but at Christmas markets in Catalonia and elsewhere in Spain they are plentiful. There are also several dedicated stores in Barcelona, Bilbao, and Madrid run by the Girona-based caganer.com, established by ceramicist Anna Maria Pla in 1992 and now run by her sons Marc and Sergi.

If you’ve still got mixed feelings about the caganer, perhaps best avoid another traditional Catalan tradition along similar lines, the caga tió. This is essentially a yule log which children “feed” for weeks in the run-up to Christmas Eve, then wallop with sticks so it “poops out” sweets and presents for them. Merry Christmas!

This article is from Idler #106.

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