A colossal collective re-enactment that involves all the inhabitants of Cerqueto, the Living Nativity Scene was invented by Don Nicola Jobbi at the end of 1966, inspired by some conversations with other local priests  and with the community leaders of the nearby Pietracamela, the village in which the play was initially intended to be performed. Organizational disagreements drove the parish priest to propose putting on the Nativity Play in Cerqueto, where the enthusiasm and heartfelt participation of the local population favoured the success of the first edition and confirmed its popularity over the decades that followed, when the scenery, the script and the soundtrack were gradually enriched. According to the testimony of Don Jobbi the first Madonna was chosen by Roberto Leydi, when he went to the village for the first time on New Year’s Day 1966 to meet the parish priest and make recordings together with Diego Carpitella.

Over the years the Living Nativity Scene has given the community an opportunity for creating a sense of belonging as they come together to re-enact the events narrated in the Holy Scriptures, from the Creation to the Advent of Christ and  the Adoration of the Magi, in a unique setting that transfigures the natural landscape into a mythical and inspirational environment, as the mountain is ,to all effects, a place which lends itself to religious revelation, the ideal location for bringing to life the interpretation of the Bible. Therefore, every year the villagers take on the roles of  St Joseph, the Virgin, the angels and the shepherds, the Lord of Creation   the Three Kings and Herod’s soldiers , and they experience a process of cyclical identification with  the key figures of the narrative.

The name that the community originally chose to give to the Living Nativity Scene, “The Mystery of the Nativity – A biblical-folkoristic event”, today also called “a religious historic re-enactment”, betrays the ambivalence of an event marked by religious elements but experienced as a profane performance or, vice versa, a play that acquires the functions of a real ritual that models the community on the basis of an exemplary story experienced in the first person as a gigantic rite of passage and the annunciation of a new world.

The bishops of the Diocese of Teramo have presided over many editions, imparting their blessing, and local newspapers have written articles with headlines like  “Cerqueto becomes Bethlehem for a night”. The baby boy or girl, identified with the King of Heaven, is selected from among the newborns in the town. The stable of the Nativity – a big hut built on the spot and visible throughout the year – is therefore in Cerqueto and there remains firmly rooted. The Cerqueto shepherds  attend the birth of “Jesus” with their sheep and goats.

Even the sounds contribute to bind together the sacred history, universal in the Christian world, with the particular life of the place; it was  Don Jobbi himself, together with Bruno Misantoni and Federico Mastrodascio, who recorded the noises of wild animals at the Zoological Garden of Rome to play as sound effects accompanying  the appearance of the first forms of life in the creation scene together with the bleating of a flock of sheep recorded in the mountains of Cerqueto.