Merry Christmas Don Camillo

About Giovanni Guareschi

Giovanni Guareschi was born in 1909 in Fontanelle di Roccabianca in the Province of Parma. In 1926 his family succumbed to the economic depression under the fascist rule of Benito Mussolini which meant that Giovanni had to leave the University of Parma without a degree and went to work in a sugar factory a bicycle compound and variously as a sign painter and mandolin teacher. A break came after he began submitting cartoons to the satirical magazine Bertoldo and from 1936 he was the chief editor of Bertoldo. In 1943 after the Allies invaded Italy he was arrested by the Germans and incarcerated in prison camps in Poland where he used his developing talents as journalist writer sketcher and cartoonist to become one of the 'animators' of the Italian Resistance. Among the partisans in the mountains communists fought alongside monarchists republicans and Catholics burying their differences for the good of the people. Here unity community freedom over political ideology individual responsibility and a sense of belonging were the values that defeated fascism and post-war became the values which inspired Guareschi's own weekly satirical magazine Candido and his fictional stories. The big political picture became in microcosm the Little World of Don Camillo the particular tensions and need for unity transferring to the fictional Don Camillo and his natural enemy Peppone the Communist Mayor while the voice of Guareschi's conscience became that of his third main character high up on the cross above the altar of the village church forever surprising us mere mortals with his warmth and wisdom.