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Joshua Gill
A Queens College folklorist created a politically-charged nativity scene featuring zombie President Donald Trump among other anti-Trump additions to the scene of Jesus’ birth.
Dr. Joseph Sciorra, director for Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, created the nativity display, entitled “Trump’s Amerikkka,” to use the birth of Christ to protest Trump’s policies, according to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The scene features a refugee version of the holy family blocked by a barb-wired fence, a skeleton wielding a battle axe, LGBT individuals, Black Lives Matter, and other figures representing Muslims, Latinos, and Arabs.
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“After this horrific political year, this new administration, I felt compelled to make the nativity scene speak for our time” Sciorra told the BDE.
Sciorra, a Catholic apostate and atheist, said the display is a specific kind of nativity called a presepio — Italian nativity displays that feature richly detailed landscapes and added scenes of markets and town life surrounding the scene of Jesus’ birth as “mirrors of the known world.”
Sciorra said his presepio, which is displayed in his kitchen, is overtly political, rather than being primarily religious, and that such displays have traditionally featured political messages. (RELATED: Church Nativity Scene Features List Of Mass Shootings)
“There is a long tradition in Italy and also in Italian-Americans of using the presepio as a statement for political means,” Sciorra told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. “My presepio this year is clearly a political statement.”
Black Lives Matter and the women’s marches against Trump feature prominently in Sciorra’s scene as well, as Sciorra said he believes figures who are “fighting back and resisting this current administration” offer hope in the midst of his doom filled nativity.
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