Nativity Scenes Evoke True Spirit Of Christmas

A Nativity scene, manger scene, krippe, creche, or crib, are all a depiction of the birth of Jesus as described in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. The term "Nativity scene" includes two dimensional depictions in film, painting, printmaking, and other media.

In the history of art and culture, as well as in popular use, the term refers to static, three dimensional, artistic, commercial or folk art dioramas, or pantomimes called "living nativity scenes" in which real humans and animals participate. Nativity scene figures are: infant Jesus, his mother Mary, and Joseph, shepherds, the Magi, angels, farm animals such as a donkey, ox and camels.

St. Francis of Assisi is credited with credited with creating the first nativity scene in 1223 (a "living one") a Greccio, Italy, intending to cultivate the worship of Christ, having been inspired by his recent visit to the Holy Land where he had been shown Jesus' traditional birthplace.  Staged in a cave near Greccio, St. Francis' nativity scene had humans and animals cast in the Biblical roles and Pope Honorius III gave his blessing to the exhibit. 

Within a hundred years every church in Italy was expected to have a nativity scene at Christmastime. Eventually, statues grew to elaborate affairs with richly robed figurines placed in intricate landscape settings.  Charles III, King of the Two Sicilies, collected such elaborate scenes, and his enthusiasm encouraged others to do the same.

The best know nativity scene in America is the Neapolitan Baroque Creche displayed annually in the Medieval Sculpture Hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It's backdrop is a 1763 choir screen from the Cathedral of Valladolid (Northern Spain) and a twenty-foot blue spruce decorated with 18th-century angels.  The nativity figures are placed at the tree's base. The creche was the gift of Loretta Hines Howard in 1964, and the choir of screen was the gift of The William Randolph Hearst Foundation in 1956.

Nativity scenes, for me, in a manger under my Christmas tree, in a painting, a displayed scene, or a movie, raises my feelings of the true spirit of Christmas, and the powerful human connection. I have an immense respect for all the ways this wonderful moment in time has lived on and is artistically interpreted.

How is your Christmas Spirit this year?

Are you impacted by artistic displays at Christmas? 

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