Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.
(Isaac Watts)
Of all the Christmas decorations we extract from the back of the cupboard and put on display at this time of year, my favourite is our wooden West African nativity set. It has twelve pieces; Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the manger, three wise men, two shepherds (one of whom appears to be either smoking a long pipe or playing a musical instrument – it’s not quite clear), two cattle and a lamb. Each one is simply, yet beautifully, carved; instantly recognisable representations of the nativity story. And yet the pieces carry some distinctly African touches with the faces rendered in a style which you see in a lot of African carvings and traditional masks. I bought this set in Freetown in Sierra Leone and it is a happy reminder of the visits I have made there and the friendships I have forged.
My set is both universal in its theme and yet culturally identifiable as coming from West Africa. I love the fact that different cultures and people choose to give a local flavour and twist as they tell the nativity story. We also own a recycled paper nativity set from Southeast Asia that we bought a few years ago from Traidcraft; so very different from the African nativity and yet equally recognisable. Many overseas development charities sell Christmas cards showing images of the nativity from different nations and cultures; Central and South America, Africa and Asia.
We understand, of course, that the nativity scenes we so love on cards and in carvings such as mine are simply a tableau, and not intended to be historically accurate. The shepherds and the Magi visited at different times and would never have met at the manger. As for the Magi themselves, we don’t know that there were “three wise men”, only that they came bearing three gifts. And few nativity scenes give any sense of the dirt, smells and noise that would have accompanied life and birth in a cattle shed.
Nativity scenes may be culturally and historically inaccurate, and they may be somewhat sanitised, but to me that matters little. What matters is that this is a story that people throughout the world and over the last 2000 years have wanted to tell. And they have wanted to tell it in a way that is relevant to their time, place and culture.
In his wonderful hymn “Joy to the world”, Isaac Watts asks for earth to “receive her king”, and for “every heart” to “prepare him room”. For me, seeing how people across our world have embraced the joy of the nativity story through how they have depicted it in art, is an example of just that.
May it be our prayer that this Christmastime, all heaven and nature will indeed sing as we all share the joy of the birth of God’s son.
Philip Clarke
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