Years ago, when I worked in an office, I had a tiny glass Nativity set that I kept in a desk drawer. I’d set my Wise Men “on the road” after Thanksgiving. Mary, Joseph, the animals and the molded glass baby-in-the-manger came out in late December. 

I’m hardly alone. Nativity sets, from the simplest printed silhouette to the most expensive, jewel-encrusted porcelain, start appearing in stores by September every year. Nativity sets are a multimillion-dollar business. 

But how and when did they start and why? The original Nativity scene was created by St. Francis of Assisi exactly 800 years ago in the Italian mountain village of Greccio.

St. Bonaventure’s “Life of St. Francis” tells us:

“It happened in the third year before his death, that in order to excite the inhabitants of Greccio to commemorate the nativity of the Infant Jesus with great devotion, St. Francis determined to keep it with all possible solemnity; and lest he should be accused of lightness or novelty, he asked and obtained the permission of the sovereign Pontiff. 

“Then he prepared a manger, and brought hay, and an ox and an ass to the place appointed. The brethren were summoned, the people ran together, the forest resounded with their voices, and that venerable night was made glorious by many and brilliant lights and sonorous psalms of praise. 

“The man of God (St. Francis) stood before the manger, full of devotion and piety, bathed in tears and radiant with joy; the Holy Gospel was chanted by Francis, the Levite of Christ. Then he preached to the people around the nativity of the poor King; and being unable to utter His name for the tenderness of His love, He called Him the Babe of Bethlehem. 

“A certain valiant and veracious soldier, Master John of Greccio, who, for the love of Christ, had left the warfare of this world, and become a dear friend of this holy man, affirmed that he beheld an Infant so marvelous sleeping in the manger, Whom the blessed Father Francis embraced with both his arms, as if he would awake Him from sleep.”

The first Nativity showed the Incarnation to the peasants of Greccio in the guise of familiar things. They owned or cared for oxen and asses, whose breath warmed them in the cold mountain winters. They fed their stock hay in mangers. How was it that God’s Son could be born in a humble cave stable, so like theirs, to sleep where farm stock fed? 

In his book “In Love with Christ, The Secret of St. Francis of Assisi,” Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap., observes:

“Francis restored ‘flesh and blood’ to the mysteries of Christianity, which were often ‘disincarnate’ and reduced to concepts in syllogisms in theological schools and books. A German scholar has seen in Francis the one who created the conditions for the birth of modern Rennaisance art, in as much as it frees sacred persons and events from the stylized rigidity of the past and confers on them concreteness and life.”

Francis was heartbroken at the poverty of the newborn Savior and his parents, who were forced to travel, to stay in a cave that housed animals and later to run for their lives. 

My little glass figurines and all those beautiful, expensive, collectible Nativity sets are just fancy dust collectors unless they call us to remember – as St. Francis did, 800 years ago - that God loves us so much that He sent His beloved Son to be cold, hungry and poor with us, and that we need to act with great love in response. 

Sharon Mech, OSF, is a member of St. Pio of Pietrelcina Franciscan Fraternity in Columbus.