Explaining Nativity Scenes to Kids

A nativity scene or creche.

Every Christmas season here in the States, Christians set up traditional nativity scenes featuring Baby Jesus. These scenes are a good opportunity for non-Christian kids to learn a little bit about the historical Jesus and about Christianity. Here’s a simple guideline to follow, to help kids (and maybe you) understand the nativity scene better. The text is written at a simple level to help you convey this information to children or to let you share it with them directly.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

The Christmas story is made up, but Jesus was a real person. He was a Jewish preacher and faith healer, and after his death his followers said he had been the divine king (“Messiah”, “Anointed”, “Christos”). Many people followed him, and that group turned into Christianity. Christianity has became the biggest religion in the world. Jesus’ mother, Mary, was also probably a real person, although maybe she didn’t like her son being a wandering preacher. Joseph’s name might be made up, and in real life Mary might have been a single mother.  

“Nativity” means a person’s birth

You’re a native of the place where you were born. That's where you “had your nativity”. The Christmas story was invented to show that Jesus had his nativity in Bethlehem. People expected the divine king to be from Bethlehem because that was King David’s city. Jesus was actually from a little town in a poor country, Galilee.

Stable, manger, and animals

The historical Jesus was a poor man who preached mostly to other poor people. In the end, rich and powerful men had him killed. The Christmas story is made up, but it does remind us that Jesus was poor. To show how poor Jesus was, the story says his crib was a food trough for animals, called a manger. He and his parents are in a stable with animals instead of in an inn or a house, which also shows how poor they were. 

Angels and shepherds

Angel means “messenger”, and in the Christmas story, angels bring the message that Jesus has been born. But instead of telling kings or wise men, they tell poor shepherds. When Christianity started, the people who liked it were mostly poor, and rich people usually didn’t join. In the story, the shepherds remind us that Jesus’ message went mostly to poor people. 

Three kings and the star

The star and the three kings are from a different Bible story and don’t belong here in the Christmas story. In the other story, Jesus is more like a little prince than a poor child, so the other story is like the opposite of the Christmas story. In this story, magicians follow a magic star to Jesus’ house in Bethlehem, and they bring him expensive gifts. The second story also has little boys being killed by soldiers, so it’s a bad story for Christmas. Even though the magicians and star are from a different story, Christians traditionally add them to the nativity scene. They also changed the magicians to three kings, to show that Jesus was more powerful than kings even when he was a child.

Where does the story come from? 

After Jesus was killed, his followers made up more and more stories about him to make him seem more important. The Christmas story says that Jesus’ father was God instead of Joseph, and that's how important Jesus was, even though he was poor. After all these years, Christians still love the Christmas story because it shows Jesus as a helpless, little baby. Everybody loves babies. Most religious leaders in history have been powerful men, but Jesus was different. The humble scene around the manger reminds us that Christianity has always held a special appeal for the poor. 

Note on historicity

The Christmas story comes from the prologue of the third gospel, Luke. The first gospel written, Mark, starts with Jesus as a man being baptized under John the Baptist. Baptism was a token of repentance in the face of an upcoming apocalypse. We don’t know anything about Jesus before that. The next two gospels followed Mark’s outline but added extra material. Among other things, each gospel added stories of Jesus’ birth. Matthew, written for Jews, portrayed Jesus as like Moses. Luke, written for poor gentiles living in crowded cities of strangers, portrayed Jesus as like those poor gentiles themselves. Luke includes some stories of Jesus’ life and teachings that scholars believe to be authentic, but the prologue is considered mythical.

Plenty of atheists will tell you that there’s no evidence that Jesus existed, but that’s a fringe idea from outside mainstream, secular scholarship. The idea that Jesus was a myth has been around for over a hundred years, and it has gone nowhere. The top scholars on the topic of Jesus agree that he was a historical person. See, for example, E. P. Sanders, Geza Vermes, Bart Ehrman, and John Dominic Crossan.

2021: Parents can decide for themselves whether to bring up the issue of human sacrifice. The helpless little baby is destined to die a miserable death on a cross. Valerie Tarico discusses this angle of the story, in case you want to know more.