Epiphany: the origin of nativity scenes

Today is Epiphany, the culmination of the Christmas season in the arrival of the Three Kings. What many may not know is that celebrating the Advent season by using the crèche, or nativity scene is a tradition that was born in Italy thanks to Saint Francis of Assisi.

After returning from his trip to Bethlehem and having been impressed by the celebration of Jesus’ birth in the Holy Land , in 1223 he asked the Pope to celebrate an outdoor service in a forest near a village in the Lazio region called Greggio. On that occasion , he decided to bring with him an ox and a donkey,  and he started to teach the farmers who couldn’t read how Jesus was born in order to save humanity. Thus, the first living nativity scene celebration was missing its 3 main protagonists

Donkey and Ox

If the first Nativity Scene reenactment was thanks to Saint Francis, the first written description comes from the Biblical gospel of Luke and Matthew , and the first artistic  descriptions of the birth of Christ are once again found in Italy. One is  in the form of a sculpture on a sarcophagus in Syracuse (Sicily)  placed inside a catacomb named Saint John. It dates back to the IV century AC, and is the final resting place of a noblewoman and her  husband.

Siracusa sarcofago

The other piece of art is even older and probably represents the oldest iconography in the world, inside another catacomb named Priscilla in Rome, dating back to the 3rd Century AC. Here, a fresco shows us  a sweet image of the whole nativity event

The tradition of celebrating nativity first became  very common in the region of Tuscany but already in the 15th century had spread across  the whole Italian peninsula and across to  Spain. By this time, the  iconography included not only the Holy family, but also the shepherds and -- added only on the day of  epiphany -- the Wise Men.Following the Council of Trent in the 16th Century, in response to the Protestant Reformation, ) the Pope encouraged the Nativity Scene  tradition and many of the noble families of Rome started to compete over who would have the richest decorations.

Nothing can really compare, however, to the crèche scenes found in and around Naples. There, in the 17th century, a new school of artisans created the most beautiful  ceramic statuettes imaginable, and also started to add some  scenes inspired by daily peasant life to the nativity. In a modern twist on this expansion of the “cast of the crèche”,  today in Naples  you can see famous neapolitan soccer players  sold in some of the Christmas Markets and added to the Nativity scene.

In Italian, the Nativity Scene is a  “Presepe”, which comes from the Latin “praesepium “ a  word composed of “Prae and “ saepire”  which means “closed by a hedge”. The underlying purpose remains that used by St. Francis to engate illiterate farmers in the story of Christ: the  whole nativity scene talks to us using the language of symbolism, and is not limited strictly to the Christmas story or message.

The Oxen  represents the Hebrews, the donkey the pagans. There is usually a  river to symbolize the life cycle from birth to death, and a well serving as  the connection between the world of the living and the dead. The woman sitting at the fountain represents the moment the Virgin Mary was first visited by the  angel.  The Palm tree is the “tree of life “ in the Garden of Eden, the Mill is time which passes , the Oven is symbol of the body of Christ, the Tavern, always placed near the Grotto is the one where Joseph and Mary were refused a place to sleep, underlining the eternal fight between good and evil. The wise men are said to represent the 3 “human races”  believed to exist at that time  human races,  and their gifts are Gold, usually given only to the Kings, Myrrh, used during the celebration of the dead, and incense. The message of the gifts is that Jesus is human, and subject to living and dying, but also our King -- and, with the incense, that he is the son of God .