What is the Christmas Crèche

If you are French you will call it crèche, if your are Italian you will call it presipio, if you are German you will call it krippe, if you are Spanish you will call it nacimiento and if you speak only English as I do, you will call it the “crib.” But what is the Christmas crèche or the Christmas crib? Well, it is an artistic three dimensional depiction of the birth of Jesus Christ in the manger and it is one of the oldest and most favored of all Christmas traditions. Artists of Christmas crèches naturally put most of their emphasis on the baby Jesus Christ and his mother Mary but they also add earthly as well as heavenly participants such as shepherds, animals, angels, wise men and common folks.

Pictures of the Baby Jesus Christ in the manger and other such pictorial stories of Bethlehem have been used in churches during services from the first centuries. However, the tradition of the Christmas Crèche as we know them today started and became so very popular with St. Francis of Assisi. While traveling to Italy in 1223 to celebrate Christmas in a small village named Greccio, St. Francis who was a deacon at the time approached a grazing field where he saw shepherds herding their livestock beneath a moonlit starry sky. This scene brought the first Christmas to his mind and he was inspired. Fearing that he may be accused of frivolity, he obtained the reigning pontiff’s permission. St. Francis then prepared a manger with hay and by Christmas Eve, St. Francis invited the villagers of Greccio to bring their lit torches and their animal and join him in a re-enactment of the Nativity scene of over twelve hundred years ago. At the same location, St. Francis also held his Midnight Mass, chanted the Gospel and delivered his sermon.

Since St. Francis’ live Nativity scene, the tradition spread from Italy to France and then to Germany and the rest of Europe. From Europe it then spread to other parts of the world. Christmas crèches were soon found in just about every Christian home, among the rich and the poor around the globe. Churches, cathedrals as well as public squares displayed Christmas crèches of one kind or another. Depending on the artists who created them, depending on local cultures and traditions, depending on economic and social standings, each crèche was distinctly differed yet the same as they all depicted the newborn Christ and his mother Mary.

Christmas crèches can be homemade by novices or commissioned by great artists, they can be purchased at thrift shops or at Christian stores. They can be made simply of wood, molded into clay, or made of fine metals and bejeweled with precious stones. They can be large or they can be small. Only one thing matter in Christmas crèches, they have to depict the Nativity scene with the spotlight on the Christ Baby and Mary his mother.

Traditionally, crèches are unwrapped with fanfare and ceremony on Christmas Eve as families gather around them. The older children of the families read from the Gospel of Bethlehem [Luke 2] then prayers are said and Christmas carols are sung. This tradition concludes with the gathered wishing each other a blessed and merry Christmas and it essentially marks the beginnings of the Feast of Christmas and its highlights will be Mass and Communion at midnight.