If you’re offering a collection of carved or painted nativity window decoration every Christmas and in the months leading up to Christmas it’s a tradition that dates back several hundred years.

If you’re showing a piece of carving or display made of plaster (or creche) during the Christmas season, you’re parting with a precious Christmas tradition that goes through the ages. Learn about the history of Nativity creches.

Tradition

Legend has it that Saint Francis was from Assisi and started his first creche when the Nativity scene was performed live spectacle that included an animal, a manger, and a donkey, all in the context of a Christmas Eve Mass he planned during his visit to this town located at the foot of the mountains in Grecia.

St. Bonaventure wrote of the evening’s events in the memoir 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

When the first Nativity scene was constructed and adopted, the custom was adopted and spread. Within a century or so the majority of churches across Italy such as, for example, it was a part of the tradition. At the time it was commonplace to use statues of animals or live figures were utilized which ultimately led to the Nativity displays in homes that are so prevalent in Christmas celebrations even today.

Creches may not be historically accurate because they depict both shepherds and they portray the Magi in the scene after Christ had been born. It is however true that Jesus’s Gospel of Matthew indicates that the Magi went along with the star toward Jesus’s home for at least a year following the birth. However, they draw their inspiration from the popular characters from the Christmas story, and they are all in one location.

There are many experts believe that the first creche to be found in Italy is composed of marble statues that were kept in Rome’s Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and believed to be the work of the artist Arnolfo di Cambio The statues have been identified as being from a variety of periods from 1284 to conclude in 1289.

A French area called Provence is well-known as a place where artisans create saints (little saints) miniature clay figures that are hand-crafted. Similar to other regions, nativity-themed home scenes were very popular in this area of France but they were usually intricate and made from expensive materials, which made them too expensive for families of a typical size. As of the French Revolution, they were nearly completely banned.

In 1797, Jean-Louis Lagnel began to make figurines of the Nativity made of clay making them available to everyone. In the later 20th century Therese Neveu introduced the tradition of firing clay figurines to improve their strength, giving birth to the santons we see in the present. It is the Musee du Santon et des Traditions de Provence that is home to one of the largest assortments of Santons. This is also where you can witness the world’s most tiny creche, which is described in by the Guinness Book of World Records which has 39 santons, to be exact.

Tomas Kryza

The Guinness Book of World Records mentions the creche designed by Tomas Kryza (1838-1918) as the largest of its type. The stocking weaver of Jindrichuv Hradec that is now the Czech Republic, Kryza spent 60 years creating the extravagant display which includes 1389 characters from humans and animals. Kryza began with his Nativity scene. In the years to follow, Kryza built more creches. The scene is now part of the collection in the Jindrichuv Hradec that also includes other Biblical themes and scenes from life as it was during the 18th century.