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. 

Thank You Baby Jesus for Literacy

In this fictional scene, Jesus and

Mary are historical figures.

At Christmas time, if you live in the States, you’re liable to see nativity creches on display on church property and sometimes on city property. Mary, Joseph, and a motley crew surround a feeding trough, in which lies the holy infant. There’s a church near my place that brings in a live camel, which is pretty cool as religious traditions go. The Christmas creche reportedly originated with Francis of Assisi in the 1200s, when it was well understood that the child in the trough was God. Today, however, there are conflicting opinions about how one should interpret Jesus as a historical figure. If you’re not the sort who’s grateful to Jesus for your eternal salvation, let me suggest a down-to-earth reason to remember Baby Jesus this Christmas season. Thank him for universal literacy. Jesus was Jewish, and that meant he was devoted to the written word in a way that no fatherless laborer in any gentile land would have been. Through the Jewish sect that Jesus founded, he passed along the Jews’ love of literacy to Europe and beyond.

Jews of Jesus’ day were known for their holy book, which commanded the respect of the Romans. While pagan religions were largely ceremonial, Judaism featured the synagogue, where the community gathered and heard the word of the LORD read aloud. The center of the religion was not an idol but the written Law (Torah). Most Jews at the time were still illiterate, as Jesus probably was, but they demonstrated a remarkable devotion to scripture.

Jesus founded a Jewish sect that survived after his execution. The sect really took off once Paul, a Hellenized Jew, convinced the leaders in Jerusalem to accept non-Jews into the movement. Paul personally took the “good word” to the gentiles, spreading Jewish scripture along with faith in Christ. Soon his own letters were being copied to be read aloud in Christian assemblies across the Roman Empire. Then, one by one, anonymous Christians composed the gospels, including many noncanonical ones. Soon Christians were busy copying texts and distributing them far and wide. They copied so many texts that they established the codex as a popular new written medium. Unlike a scroll, the codex had separate pages stacked on top of each other, bound together along one edge. Yes, early Christianity gave us the book.

When Christianity turned into Rome’s official religion, it replaced ancient religious practices that were cultic and ceremonial, with no holy books comparable to the Christians’ newly expanded Bible. This was before the Dark Ages, and Christianity lived peacefully alongside the intellectual, literate tradition of the ancient world. For example, Christians considered people in India to be saved if they adhered to the Word of God as the Buddha had preached it, presuming that the Word had inspired people all over the world.

When Rome fell and the Latin-speaking West fell with it, Western Christianity entered the Dark Ages. With civilization in ruin, the schools were closed, and intellectual life collapsed. Later, Christian missionaries from Ireland brought a superstitious version of Christianity to mainland Europe. That’s where you get Purgatory, which you could reportedly locate if you went into a particular cave in Ireland. The Mass, said in Latin rather than the vernacular, sounded like magical incantations. The Bible was rarely translated into the common tongue.

Despite the decline of the Church, it still supported literacy. With the fall of Rome, the Church became the only international institution in the West and the sole preserver of books and literacy. Churchmen were commonly among the first people to leave written records in a language with no previous literature. Sometimes the Christians provided a language with its first alphabet. Wherever Christians spread their faith, they spread literacy. As in the early days, churchmen hand-copied a lot of texts over the centuries. A “cleric” is a “clerk,” someone who reads, writes, and does numbers. Commoners went to the clergy for help with written documents. The Church Council of 1179 mandated free Latin instruction at cathedrals to benefit poor scholars, combining Christianity’s interest in charity and literacy. This practice soon developed into Europe’s first universities.

As civilization recovered, the Church continued to support learning. Copernicus, for example, was funded by the Church. The first book printed on Gutenberg’s press was a Bible. With that technology, the Bible was translated into every major European language and printed in large numbers. Martin Luther’s challenge to the Church was a written tract, one that was soon printed up and distributed. The Reformers emphasized that Christians should be able to read the Bible themselves, all the way down to the simple plowman in his field. Rather naively, Martin Luther thought that everyone would naturally interpret the Bible his way if only they had a chance, and he translated the Bible into German to give that chance to more people. The ideal medieval Christian listened to church authority, but the ideal Reformation Christian had read the Bible for themselves. In Denmark, Protestant ministers taught the peasants to read and write, which allowed the peasantry to participate in the politics of their kingdom, perhaps for the first time anywhere in the world. Sunday school, an institution hated by children from Tom Sawyer to me, began in the 1780s as an effort to teach poor children to read. It had to be on Sunday because the kids would be working the other six days. Today we take it for granted that a public school is going to teach kids to read for free. Historically speaking, however, a culture’s ruling power structure usually hasn’t wanted the commoners to be able to read. Literacy might let them read laws for themselves, draw up proper legal documents, sue in court, and pass along subversive messages. Universal literacy began as a Christian project. Across the globe, missionaries opened schools and even taught girls to read. Today universal literacy is a secular ideal, but the original momentum was Christian.

What was Jesus’ role in all this? Jesus didn’t do much directly to promote literacy, but he did say things that were noteworthy enough that others wrote them down. He also led a life that was so dramatic that early Christians invented a new literary form to narrate that life: the “gospel.” Somehow he expressed the humanism and piety of his Jewish tradition in such an arresting and accessible way that it appealed to Paul, a Hellenized Jew, and to the gentiles among whom Paul lived. Jesus’ predominant contribution to world literacy was that he founded a sect that would metamorphose into a world religion, and that he was Jewish. That seems to have been enough to get the ball rolling toward universal literacy. So the next time you drive past a nativity creche, thank Baby Jesus for our literate culture.

2013

This year's ad ends with happy holiday cheer.

Are Atheists Softening?

It’s Christmas once again, a time of caroling, brightly wrapped gifts, holiday cheer, and anti-religious billboards from the American Atheists. True to form, they are sponsoring an animated billboard in Times Square that insults Christians and features ALL CAPS, as if yelling is the atheist idiom. But wait, it’s not that simple. The 12-second ad ends with a cheery Christmas scene and holiday wishes. The ad might lead someone to suspect that atheists are regular, reasonable people who like the holidays just like anyone else. It's a step forward from the mean-spirited billboards that AA put up two years ago. Maybe in some future Christmas they’ll set aside the negativity and insults altogether. Meanwhile on the West Coast, the Freedom From Religion Foundation has put up billboards in Sacramento featuring smiling local atheists, each with a short phrase about their beliefs or lack thereof. These images imply that atheists can be friendly and thoughtful. Could it be that atheists are learning that a little niceness can go a long way? The general public distrusts us from the start, so anything we can do to show our human side has got to pay off.

This shift in public presentation comes alongside a growing number of atheist books that have challenged the anti-religious stance of the New Atheists. Recently I’ve read three books that offer atheist perspectives on religion as an admirable human endeavor: Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists (2012), Christ Stedman’s Faitheist (2012), and Frans de Waal’s The Bonobo and the Atheist (2013). Without denying that religions have dark sides, these authors address their light sides. De Botton examines the valuable social organization that religion can provide and that secular groups could emulate. Stedman encourages atheists to participate in interfaith movements to help fight religious extremism. De Waal criticizes the militance of the New Atheists and asserts that religion can have emotional benefits event if its supernatural claims aren’t true or even really believed. Together, atheists like these three are offering a more broad-minded take on what atheism means. I find it a welcome change.

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AA billboards from 2011.

Christmas Unitarian-style

Nordics like to honor Santa Lucia,
a figure of light in the darkness.
Her name means “Holy Light-Girl”.

If you’ve ever wondered how a church congregation might handle Christmas when it’s not a Christian church, you’re in luck. The Unitarian Universalist church where I teach Sunday school is big enough to offer a variety of Christmas-themed events, and they provide a special insight into how a congregation without a creed conducts itself. Here’s a rundown, with commentary.

Festive solstice potluck: First off, if you want some holiday cheer but don’t want to honor the Christmas tradition, per se, you’re covered. Local “Freethought” groups, such as Humanists of Washington and Seattle Atheists, gather at the church for a “Winter Potluck”. Lots of atheists attend but think it’s weird to meet in a church.

Family holiday service: This is my favorite, where the kids do a semi-traditional Christmas pageant, with little kids dressed as sheep, wise men, and the rest. It’s not all by the book. The number of wise men expands to keep kids from getting left out. Sometimes we Unitarians are smeared as “atheists with kids,” and this event plays to that stereotype. Where else could my atheist daughter have ever played Mary?

Family candlelight service: This one’s a little more serious, taking place in the evening, with kids doing readings. Our Seattle congregation has a large number of Nordics, so we do the Santa Lucia bit, where a teen girl with candles on her head walks through the sanctuary with attendants, all in white. There’s nothing particularly universal or unitarian about this ceremony, other than that as Unitarian Universalists we can do whatever we want, and this is one of the things that we want to do.

Candlelight Christmas Eve service: This service is the most traditional of our services, for those of us who really want to get our Christmas fix. Christmas Eve services are beautiful whether you believe in anything or not, and especially if it plays into your nostalgia.

Messiah Sing- and Play-Along: For the real music lovers, there’s an event the day after Christmas where you can sing along to Handel’s Messiah, solos and everything. If you’re handy with an instrument, bring it along and play. It’s so popular that you have to buy tickets, and they always sell out.

Blue Christmas: This special Christmas service says something about how intentional we are about our church experience. This service is especially for people who are sad around the holidays, which is a lot of people. For people in grief, all the holiday cheer, Christmas carols, and kids’ events can make things worse. This quiet service is for them. What other church acknowledges how many people feel the holidays as a time of loss?


In the nineteenth-century, Unitarians and allies, such as Charles Dickens, were central in the successful campaign to transform Christmas from an adults’ drinking party to a tender-hearted, family-oriented holiday. Our congregation continues in that tradition, honoring Christmas, but taking it on our own terms. Our approach is customer-centric. There isn’t any church hierarchy telling us to do anything other than what the various people in our congregation want to do. Merry Christmas!

2011

Making us atheist look like jerks

Atheist Billboards

It’s no wonder that so many people think we atheists hate God. Like they did last year, the American Atheists have launched a Christmas-season advertising campaign (see image). This ad makes fun of people for what they believe in, which makes us atheists sound as intolerant as religious conservatives. The ad even uses ALL CAPS to demonstrate how very indignant we atheists are about religion.

If I were calling the shots with the atheists’ PR campaign, I’d run positive, pro-Christmas ads. I like Christmas, and I’m an atheist. Let’s show that we atheists are a fun-loving, open-minded bunch. Unlike some religious people we could point at, we don’t think that everyone who believes differently from us is bad, stupid, or in Satan’s grasp. My ads would say something like,

“Have a very merry Christmas, whether you believe in God or not.” 

Or maybe they would say,

“We can each believe in any gods we like, or not.” 

And there would be NO all caps.


PS: Judging by a 2013 billboard from American Atheists, they may be softening.

Why Atheists Are Jerks: Personality and atheism.