Who invented the Italian “presepe” (nativity scene)?

This Christmas quiz asks who invented the presepe, the nativity scene — and the answer is San Francesco, St. Francis of Assisi. On Christmas Eve in the year 1223, in the small town of Greccio, Francis staged the very first presepe: a cave, a manger, a live ox and donkey, and a midnight Mass held right there among them.

Francis wasn’t trying to build a decoration — he wanted people who had never been to Bethlehem to feel physically present at Christ’s birth. The idea caught on across Europe and, eight centuries later, presepi (plural) big and small are still a fixture of Italian homes, churches, and town squares every December.