If you are displaying a set of carved or plaster Nativity figures at Christmas time, you are taking part in a custom that goes back centuries.
If you display a plaster or sculptured Nativity set (or creche) this Christmas, you are participating in a cherished holiday tradition that dates back hundreds of years. Discover the long-standing background of Nativity creches.
Tradition
Tradition has it that Saint Francis of Assisi created the first creche in 1223. The nativity scene was a live scene, consisting of a manger, an ox, and a donkey, as part of a Christmas Eve Mass he planned while visiting the mountain town of Grecia.
St. Bonaventure was the one who wrote about that night in his biography of St. Francis, “A certain valiant and veracious soldier, Master John of Grecio, who, for the love of Christ, had left the warfare of this world, and become a dear friend of this holy man, affirmed that he beheld an Infant marvelously beautiful, sleeping in the manger, Whom the blessed Father Francis embraced with both his arms as if he would awake Him from sleep.”
Nativity at Christmas
Following the first nativity scene, it became a popular practice and spread throughout the world. In a short time, each church across Italy, for example, adopted the practice. With time, statues instead of live people and animals were substituted and eventually resulting in the home-based nativity scene that has become present in Christmas celebrations today.
They aren’t necessarily accurate historically, given that most depict both the shepherds as well as the Magi as being at the manger right after Christ was born. The Gospel of Matthew suggests that the Magi followed the star to Jesus’s house a year or more after the birth, however, believers get their inspiration from these beloved figures from the Christmas story gathered together in one place.
Many scholars claim that the oldest known creche found in Italy is a set of marble figures that were housed within Rome’s Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and attributed to the sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio. The sculptures were dated in various ways from 1284 until 1289.
The French Province of Provence is renowned as being the home of artisans who create santons (little saints) miniature clay figures that are made by hand. Similar to other regions, home-based nativity scenes had become very popular throughout the years throughout this region of France however, they were usually intricate and made from expensive materials and therefore were too expensive for the average household. During the French Revolution, they were even banned outright.
In 1797, Jean-Louis Lagnel began to make nativity figures out of clay, making them affordable for most everyone, and in the 20th century Therese Neveu introduced the idea of firing clay figures to make them stronger and gave birth to Santons as we know them today. Musee du Santon et des Traditions de Provence is home to the most extensive collection of santons and it is there that you can look at the world’s tiniest creche which is the subject of the Guinness Book of World Records with 39 santons in a nutshell.
Tomas Kryza
The Guinness Book of World Records cites the creche built by Tomas Kryza (1838-1918) as the world’s largest of its kind. A stocking weaver from Jindrichuv Hradec in what is now today the Czech Republic, Kryza spent 60 years creating the extravagant display, which has 1389 figures of humans and animals. Kryza started his work with the Nativity scene, and then in the years that followed, he expanded the creche, currently housed in a museum in Jindrichuv Hradec in order to display various Biblical themes as well as scenes from daily life in the 19th century.
Today, people are opting for more minimalistic nativity yard signs which show such diverse and creative nativity scenes.