Make the season bright with Reindeer Knoll - a joyful guide to Christmas traditions, history, activities, and songs. Discover the origins of beloved Christmas customs like decorating trees, Santa Claus, and gift-giving. Learn fun holiday activities like baking cookies, building snowmen, and Christmas crafts. Sing along to classic Christmas carols and songs the whole family will love.
A Nativity play or Christmas pageant is a play which recounts the story of the Nativity of Jesus. It is usually performed at Christmas, the feast of the Nativity. The term "Nativity Drama" is used by Wellesz in his discussion of the hymns Byzantine Rite Churches, from Sophronius in the seventh century. Goldstein argues that the label "drama" is misleading, that the troparia are more akin to an oratorio than a play, and that the form is not a precursor of later more decidedly dramatic forms.
The tradition of the nativity scene comes from Italy. One of the earliest representation in art of the nativity was found in the early Christian Roman catacomb of Saint Valentine. It dates to about AD 380. Another, of similar date, is beneath the pulpit in Sant'Ambrogio, Milan. The first seasonal nativity scene, which seems to have been a dramatic rather than sculptural rendition, is attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis' 1223 living nativity scene.
St. Francis told the part of each character in the story himself using wooden figures in the play. After a couple of years, the play had become so popular that real people played the parts of the characters in the story. Usually you only have one Mary, Joseph, King Herod and angel Gabriel and only three wise men, the number of participants for the remaining characters can vary depending on the number in the play.