An 800-Year-Old Christmas Tradition
Each December Christians in many countries seek to portray the beauty of that wonderful night two thousand years ago when the Savior of the world was born in Bethlehem. Artists create nativity scenes. Families set up displays inside and outside of their homes. Churches borrow animals, make costumes, and perform live nativity scenes to teach their communities about the birth of Jesus. They also hold special Christmas worship services. Churches and Christian schools put on Christmas pageants.
I always appreciate finding a nativity scene in a public place and was delighted to find one in the lobby of the hotel where we stayed when we were recently in Pigeon Forge.
The tradition of nativity scenes is 800 years old this Christmas. In 1223 Francis of Assisi planned a live nativity scene (or presepio) in Greccio in Italy. The scene helped onlookers feel the magnitude of the miraculous birth of Jesus that had occurred over a thousand years before.
Over the centuries, a desire to make nativity scenes with handmade figures spread across Europe. Families worked together to carve figures and to arrange the scenes. Famous sculptors made figures for the wealthy. Children sang around the nativity in Spain, France, and Germany.
In the Czech and Slovak Republics, families carved figures from wood and passed them down from generation to generation. They called the scene a Bethlehem. In Spain the nativity scene, or nacimiento, always had a figure of a woman washing clothes.
In France, where a nativity scene is called a crèche, people added moss, stones, greens, and numerous santon figures, often made of terra cotta. The figures represented Bible characters and also everyday people, such as bakers, grocers, and friends.
This French relief sculpture of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph includes an unusual depiction. Joseph is warming Jesus’ clothes over a fire.
Italians also created nativity scenes with a wide variety of figures. In 1964 Loretta Hines Howard donated over 140 creche figures created in Naples, Italy, c. 1750-1850. These depict Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; angels, shepherds, and sheep; the traveling magi and their companions; the throng of residents of Bethlehem, and travelers who were there for the census. The poseable figures are 12 to 15 inches tall. Their arms and legs are carved of wood. Their heads and shoulders are made of terra cotta. They are dressed in beautiful fabric, jewels, and embroidery. Below are the infant Jesus, Mary, Joseph, a shepherd, and a sheep from the collection.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Gift of Loretta Hines Howard, 1964
Puerto Ricans carve wooden figures called santos. This santo dates from the early 1700s.
In Mexico, setting up the family’s nativity scene, called a nacimiento, is one of the family’s most important traditions. Mexican families also pass figures down from generation to generation. Public nativity scenes are common in Mexican towns. Some have even been as large as a football stadium.
Ray and I still see public displays of nativity scenes from time to time, including on the courthouse lawn in nearby Cookeville, Tennessee. When I was a child, Harvey’s department store displayed a 280-foot long nativity scene along the side of the city’s life-size replica of the Greek Parthenon. The tradition began in 1954 and continued to 1967. My family took this photograph of a portion of the display during the 1960s.
On December 22, 1960, photographer Marion S. Trikosko took this photo of the nativity scene in front of the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C.
Praise God for giving us this wonderful real event to remember and proclaim, the birth of our Savior in the little town of Bethlehem.
And she gave birth to her firstborn son;
and she wrapped Him in cloths,
and laid Him in a manger,
because there was no room for them in the inn.
Luke 2:7