Who, among people that make the crib every year, knows the legend of Saint Stephen's birth who changed from stone into a child during the Christmas night? Who knows the legend of sad girl who roamed, without respite, near the bridge carrying her boyfriend's head cut off? Who knows the statuettes of Three Kings on their white, red and dark horses represent the course of the sun from dawn till dusk? Who knows some people set on the older cribs a female figure, The Magia King, to represent the moon? In a voyage into the heart of tradition, the popular legends, the ritual plays and the dreams, De Simone's musical writing, with the counterpoint of 90 images drawn from the eighteenth old "Smorfia", goes back to the pre-Christian origins of Christmas:

 that is the ones linked to the solar myth of Divine Child had by a Virgin Mother in a cave.
The book restores the nocturnal aspect of crib and tells the original symbolic features of characters. Histories and fantastic legends are told , in parallel, also by those who, every Christmas, build, act and love the crib. The second part of book, another voyage through witnesses and interviews, reveals the unexpected meanings of crib figures, told by a "puparo" from Grottaglie and another from Naples, by a sailor from Torre del Greco who has been impersonating for all his life the Devil in the "Shepherds' Sing" and by a metalworker " craftsman of the people" of Anticaglia. Since it is difficult to image a traditional Christmas without bingo, dreams and bagpipes, the book terminates with the 90 numbers of " spoken bingo" drawn, described and mimed by people on Christmas Eve and with the notes of a lullaby dedicated to all the dead bagpipers. Another witness that the traditional crib is an open book is given by a big tarot of life, death and the universe that surrounds us, readable according to the codified language of common imaginary.
Roberto De Simone is a musician, a composer, a director and a theatrical author. For Einaudi he has published the music tale "La Gatta Cenerentola" and has edited the "Fiabe Campane"