With the arrival of Advent, many cities and homes in Spain place their Christmas cribeither a basic one with a manger and the main characters, that is to say the Virgin, the child Jesus, Saint Joseph, an angel and the three wise menor a more elaborate one, with a whole reconstruction of a small village with its shepherds, artisans or even another series of workers or inhabitants, which also includes the creation of bridges, artificial moss and the reconstitution of water, as well as indigenous figures like the caganerwith a long tradition in Catalonia.
We all know what a Christmas cribwe install one in our house and we can even go and see some of the living nativity scenes that are made throughout our territory, but what is less common is to know the history of this tradition rooted in the Christmas holidays, and for this we have to travel to Italy.
This is how what we call Bethlehem was born.
To know the origin of the crèche or crèche, we must go back to the first Christian communities, to Roman catacombswhere the first representations of nativity scenes were found, the oldest being a fresco from the 2nd century Greek Capellain the catacombs of Priscilla from Rome, where the Virgin Mary is depicted with the child Jesus on her chest wrapped in swaddling clothes and next to them appears the three wise men of the Eastwho at this moment appear without mantle or crown.
But it was in the 5th century that the first representations recreating the birth of Christ appeared, more precisely in Rome, in what is called church of Santa Maria ad Preasepewhich is today the v, one of the most important in the city and which houses the tomb of Pope Francis I, who died in 2025. Here, the pope Sixtus III He had brought back fragments of the “sacred cradle” from the Holy Land and placed them in a chapel set up for this purpose.
From here there is another germ that will later give birth to what we know as Bethlehem, and these are the traditional representations that began to be carried out in the 8th century in different places in Italy, in which both the birth and the resurrection of Jesus were represented, but which were criticized by the Pope of the time, Innocent IIIwho described them as “vulgar”.
The first known Christian nativity scene took place in the 13th century.
From here we move to the 13th century, more precisely in 1223, when Saint Francis of Assisi He installed what was the first crèche as we know it today, and which would take place in the town of Greccio, in the Lazio region, Italy, where he arrived to evangelize the population, the majority of which was illiterate, and for this reason the saint asked Pope Honorius III for a dispensation to be able to create the first living nativity scene in a cave near the city’s hermitage.
What we know about this episode is what is reported in the Major legend of Saint Francis of Assisi, who claims that a manger was prepared, with hay, straw and animals, and that the figure which replaced the child Jesus because of the winter cold at night, was seen coming to life, according to some sources he began to cry, according to others he moved his arms. But what is important in this nativity scene is the introduction of figures like the donkey and the ox, which do not appear in the birth story of the four gospels, although they are mentioned in the book of Isaiah of the Old Testament.
The Christmas nativity scene was introduced to Spain by King Charles III
From the representation of the nativity scene of Saint Francis of Assisi we move on to the first modern form with figures attributed to Saint Cajetan of Thiène in 1534, and this developed into the Baroque, when it reached stately and modest homes, with Neapolitan nativity scenes becoming famous in the 18th century for their mixture of sacred scenes and everyday life. This tradition was particularly appreciated by King Charles III, who had been king in Naples and who, after moving to Spain, imported this tradition with his wife, Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony.
The kings even built a special hall known as thePrince’s Bethlehem‘, first in the Buen Retiro Palace, then in the Royal Palace, which was a typical Neapolitan nativity scene with local customs and clothing, commissioned from the Valencians. José Esteve Bonet and José Ginés Marínas well as Murcian Francisco Salzillo. This custom spread until it became common in Spanish homes by the mid-19th century.
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