St. Francis and the first Nativity Scene

Written by Jonathan Punt

Advent is a season full of beloved symbols. There are the calendars—designed creatively to build maximum anticipation. Today these can take the form of everything from your classic felt calendars to more innovative designs centered around bacon or dad jokes. There are, of course, the candles that move from purple, a color of repentance and waiting to pink, the color of rejoicing. Churches and homes are filled with various forms of indoor evergreenery meant to symbolize the constancy of God’s faithfulness. My personal favorite though, has to be the Nativity Scene. A Willow Tree Nativity Scene was the first Christmas present I got for Amelia after we were married, and it remains my favorite piece of advent decor to set up every year. 

Nativity scenes are special in their own right. How often are adults allowed to collect and display what are essentially play dolls as the beauty of the Christmas story allows them to do? The history of the Nativity scene makes an even stronger contender for the top symbol of advent. The Nativity scene was made popular by St. Francis of Assisi back in the early 13th century. As an older man failing in health, St. Francis approached one of his last Christmas seasons by brainstorming ways to make the Christmas story more accessible and more alive to the common church-goer of his day. It didn’t take him long to realize that surely nothing could make Christmas feel more alive than a living Nativity scene. With real animals, hay, and a manger, St. Francis invited parishioners into the shocking humility that characterized the conditions of our Savior's birth. St. Francis’ Nativity scene proved to be such an effective medium to communicate the Christmas story that Franciscan communities quickly spread the practice. Eventually “static crèche” scenes (small figurines) were created to bring the Nativity experience into homes—a tradition which became universal in the church by the late middle ages and continues today in millions of homes including ours. 

As one of the last major gifts he offered the church, St. Francis’ living Nativity was a fitting capstone to his life of ministry. His entire life of ministry had prepared him for this moment—shaped by humility, poverty, and service to the vulnerable. To see why Francis’s nativity mattered—and why it still deepens our own understanding of the Christmas story—it helps to look briefly at his life. 

St. Francis was born into a family of wealthy cloth merchants in Assisi, Italy. He grew up as a wealthy socialite, well-familiar with extravagance and the finer things of life. His life began to change after he went to war, was captured and imprisoned. This new-found experience of suffering opened his eyes to the suffering many in his community experienced in their ordinary lives. A climactic moment occurred when St. Francis met a man suffering from leprosy and was moved with such compassion, he embraced him. St. Francis soon recognized that God was calling him to renounce his wealth and devote his life to service of the poor and marginalized. In fact, the story goes that one day Francis’ father was so fed up with all of the money and clothes Francis had been giving to rebuild churches and care for the poor that he dragged Francis in front of the bishop and demanded repayment. In response, Francis gave his father back all his money and even the clothes off his back, signifying his complete renunciation of his family's wealth. This iconic scene is depicted in countless paintings with St. Francis standing naked and declaring to his father and the bishop, “From now on I will say, ‘Our Father who art in heaven,’ not ‘my father Pietro.” 

Throughout his life, St. Francis lived up to this promise. He intentionally identified and associated with social outcasts, embedding himself in leper colonies for much of his life. He preached sermons for the common person in the language of the people. He refused to own property personally or corporately through his movement, instead directing donations to meeting practical needs of the poor and rebuilding forgotten abandoned chapels in rural areas. Perhaps most notably of all, he founded the Order of the Friars Minor who distinguished themselves from other mendicant groups by rejecting the life of the Monastery and instead choosing to live amongst ordinary people. This community still exists throughout the world today operating shelters, soup kitchens, and continuing to emphasize the incarnational duty of the church to make itself present in the lives of those who are suffering. 

The message of St. Francis and his order was a much needed wake up call to the 13th century church. At the time, many of the church's practices made God seem inaccessibly transcendent, distant, and disconnected from the common people. The church was the wealthiest institution in Europe, save the monarchy in a few countries. In the class conflicts that broiled during this era, the church most often took the side of the nobles and elites. This is likely because a leadership position in the church was often acquired simply by buying the office. Church liturgy was done in Latin, a language most parishioners couldn’t understand. And even if the homilies could be understood, the concepts were often too lofty and academic to touch ordinary lives of the parishioners. In short, the church at this time was losing the battle against a constant temptation that has plagued the people of God—to ally with the world and its wealth, power, and prestige, rather than to ally with the incarnate God who embodied a gospel of humility, vulnerability, and self-sacrifice. 

As you set up your nativity this year and as you admire the various scenes displayed in other households, remember the long history of the practice. Let it remind you that Jesus’ entrance into the world represented a bold and shocking message. When God came to earth, he did not identify with the elite and influential of his day, but with the humble, the poor and the penitent. With his living Nativity, St. Francis demonstrated to the church that Christ did not come to save the healthy, but the sick. He invited his parishioners to rededicate their lives to the incarnate Savior born in a humble manger. That same invitation is available to us today.