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Advent begins November 29

The Almanac

The Christmas crib

The stable scene with the manger, the animals and the shepherds. It began as a living prayer in a hillside town in 1223.

A medieval fresco of Saint Francis kneeling at a manger inside a church, with a baby on the hay, an ox and a donkey, and friars singing.
The Institution of the Crib at Greccio, a fresco in the Upper Basilica of San Francesco, Assisi, about 1295 to 1300, attributed to Giotto and workshop. Public domain. Credits
When it is kept
Advent and Christmas
Where it fits in the year
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day

St Francis of Assisi is credited with the first nativity scene, at Greccio in central Italy at Christmas 1223.1 He wanted people to see for themselves how the baby lay in a manger on hay, with an ox and a donkey beside him. We know this from Thomas of Celano, who wrote Francis’s life.1,2 Franciscan scholars describe a manger of straw with the animals, in a cave where Mass was said. It was a living prayer more than a display of statues.2,3

Nativity pictures are much older than Francis. A catacomb painting in Rome from about the year 380 shows the scene. Around 1290 the sculptor Arnolfo di Cambio made a group of stone figures for the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.1

Later the crib spread across Christian lands. In Naples in the 1700s families filled the scene with nobles, market sellers and street life, and the shops of Via San Gregorio Armeno still sell the figures.4 In Provence, France, the clay figures are called santons, "little saints". The Marseille santon fair has run since 1803.5

A common claim that needs a correction

Francis did not invent the whole scene as we know it, with figures of the baby, Mary and Joseph. Earlier pictures exist, and a Franciscan teacher says there were no figures of Mary or Joseph at Greccio. The great painting of the scene by Giotto was made about seventy years later.1,2

Disputed

Some say the santons of Provence began when churches were closed in the French Revolution and families made clay figures at home. The sources disagree about the year the first clay figures were made.5

In the Bible

While they were there, the day had come for her to give birth. She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a feeding trough, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Luke 2:6-7

When the angels went away from them into the sky, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem, now, and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” They came with haste and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby was lying in the feeding trough.

Luke 2:15-16

Luke names a manger and shepherds. The wise men come in Matthew 2. Luke does not name an ox or a donkey. They come from Celano’s story of Francis and from later art.

Sources

  1. Nativity scene, Wikipedia (also the catacomb painting and Arnolfo di Cambio)
  2. Remembering Fr. Michael Blastic: homily for the 800th anniversary of Christmas in Greccio, Franciscan Tradition
  3. Francis and the crib, Messenger of Saint Anthony
  4. Presepe napoletano, Wikipedia
  5. The santons of Provence, France Today

Walk through the Christmas Bible readings