A Crèche For Today

Every December, the crèche appears again. 

Sometimes it is tucked into a quiet corner of the sanctuary. Sometimes it sits on a side table at home. We know the figures by heart: Mary kneeling. Joseph standing watch. Animals frozen around the manger. Shepards and kings haphazardly kneeling around the scene itself. I remember how, as I kid, I loved to unwrap the crèche; I looked forward to the moments I could sneak in a few moments to play with the shepherds and cows. 

It wasn't until a year I spent abroad in Germany that I was struck again by the magic of the creche. I remember going into the main cathedral in Heidelberg during Advent. It's a tradition in German churches to put up a life-sized (or sometimes larger-than-life-sized) creche at the front of the church near the altar. The creche stands there throughout the season of Advent. These creches are often very well-thought works of art, and it's common to take a few moments to visit the creche after spending time on at the Christmas market on the market square. 

Anyway, I distinctly remember the sense of awe that one chilly evening in Heidelberg. The crèche looked nothing like the polished scenes from our North American picture books. There was no soft glow, no tidy stable, no carefully color-coordinated robes. Instead, the figures stand in modern clothes. Jackets were worn thin. Shoes were scuffed. Faces looked tired in a way that feels uncomfortably familiar. Mary and Joseph were refugees, carrying the strain of long travel in their hunched backs and worn faces. There was no sense of glamorous arrival. Nearby, figures meant to be shepherds resemble people living on the edges of society. Some were weighed down by poverty; Others stood alone, shoulders slumped, eyes cast downward, marked by depression or isolation. The setting offers little shelter. The space feels exposed, as if it could be dismantled at any moment. It does not invite nostalgia; it invites recognition.

This nativity challenged the story of Christmas that we repeat year after year. But I think it's an authentic challenge.

The tradition of the crèche  goes back to 1223, when Francis of Assisi created a living nativity in the Italian village of Greccio. He wanted people to encounter the Christmas story not as an idea, but as something real and close at hand. Straw. A manger. The sounds and smells of a stable. Francis believed that if people could see and touch the story, they might better understand what it meant for God to come near and choose to be with us.

The crèche does not explain the incarnation. It shows it. God does not arrive with spectacle or strength. God comes as a child laid in a feeding trough, dependent on the care of others. The scene, as Francis of Assisi thought of it, was immensely ordinary.

For children, the crèche often becomes their first theology lesson. baby Jesus is small enough to hold. The animals can be moved. The shepherds can come in to see the baby Jesus; the star can be placed above the stable. For adults, the same scene can speak differently. It reminds us that God’s work in the world rarely looks impressive. Holiness often appears in places that feel unfinished or overlooked.

That ordinariness is the point.

The crèche refuses to let us imagine God arriving on God’s own terms. There is no control, no insulation from risk, no guarantee of safety. The incarnation begins with a family doing their very best to survive under the weight of forces that are far beyond them.

Seen through that lens, the Heidelberg crèche no longer feels like a distortion of the Christmas story. It feels like a faithful retelling. By placing Mary and Joseph among refugees, the poor, and the emotionally exhausted, it draws a straight line between Bethlehem and the present day. It reminds us that God still chooses to enter the world through the lives of those who are pushed to the margins.

This is what the crèche offers, year after year. Not sentimentality, but proximity. Not escape, but recognition. It trains our eyes to look for holiness in places we are tempted to overlook and to trust that God is already at work there.

Every December, the figures appear again. We set them out. We arrange them carefully or let children move them out of place. We pass by them on our way to worship or pause for a moment longer than we meant to. And they keep telling the same story.

God comes close. God chooses vulnerability. God meets us not in perfection, but in the midst of ordinary, fragile life.

That is the magic of the crèche. And that is still good news.