Everything about Nativity Play totally explained
A
Nativity play or
Christmas pageant is
play which recounts the story of the
Nativity of Jesus. It is usually performed at
Christmas, the
feast of the Nativity.
Liturgical
The term "Nativity Drama" is used by Wellesz in his discussion of the
troparion hymns in the Christmas
liturgy of
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 isn't a precursor of later more decidedly dramatic forms.
Saint
Francis of Assisi performed
Midnight Mass in
Greccio on Christmas Eve 1223 in front of a life-size
nativity scene built by Giovanni Velita, with live animals. This is sometimes credited as the first nativity play.
More formal Nativity plays have featured in
Christian worship since medieval
mystery plays. The twelfth to nineteenth pageants of the 48-cycle
York Mystery Plays dealt with the Nativity story.
In
Germany, the
Weihnachten services on
Christmas Eve include a children's
Mass called
Weihnachtsgeschichte, which features a
Krippenspiel ("
crib play").
Popular
In
Latin America pastorelas ("shepherd's plays") are performed in many local communities. These were imported during
Spanish colonization of the Americas but are no longer common in
Spain. They recount the story of the
shepherds travelling to worship the newborn Christ, augmenting the Biblical text with
apocryphal events,
indigenous beliefs, regional features,
anachronisms,
satire and
buffoonery. Each community's play evolves into a distinctive tradition.
In
Belgium,
puppet theatres often put on variations on the Nativity play in the weeks before Christmas, with parents and their children in the audience. The play often depicts the
Massacre of the Innocents which occurred after the birth of Jesus. Joan Gross traces this augmentation back to cryptic protests in the late nineteenth century against the abuse of native peoples by colonists in the
King Leopold II's
Congo Free State. At one school in
Somerset, disturbances were reported after allegations that tickets had misallocated by organisers, and forged by a parent.
Literary
Modern writers to have written Nativity plays include
Laurence Housman (
Bethlehem, 1902; musical accompaniment by
Joseph Moorat c.1919);
Lucjan Rydel (
Polish Bethlehem, 1904);
Cicely Hamilton (
The Child in Flanders: A Nativity Play, 1922); and
Dorothy L. Sayers (
He That Should Come, 1938).
Jean-Paul Sartre's first play was
Bariona ou le fils du tonerre, a nativity play performed on Christmas Eve 1940 while a
prisoner of war in a German
stalag. Sartre saw Christ as part of the
Jewish Resistance to the
Roman Empire's occupation, mirroring the
French Resistance of
Nazi Germany's occupation.
Further Information
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