I suspect it can’t be long now before letters are written to the Times complaining about the disappearance of traditional nativity plays. Recently I found a photograph of myself aged about seven in a cast line up for the traditional version, playing the part of the inn keeper. I can even remember one of my lines, which for obvious reasons wouldn’t be allowed today. As the kings arrived I had to say ‘Put their camels in the stable, wife!’ My wife and I are well to the left of the photo; Mary and Joseph and the baby are centre stage; and to their right are the shepherds wearing tea towels which is perhaps the one thing about nativity plays which hasn’t changed. What has changed is the centrality of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. This year our Parochial school play was entitled Mr Inn and Mr Out. It concerned two innkeepers competing to avoid their inns being turned into a multi-story camel park. Last year’s play was called the Hoity Toity Angel a thoroughly modern angel who thought shepherds and stables were beneath her attention. Then there is the Whoopsa Daisy angel, much beloved of nursery schools, who can’t be trusted to get anything right. Of course all these plays contain the traditional holy family, but I suspect competition to play the part of Mary or Joseph is not nearly so great these days; the other characters have become so much more interesting – and of course there are so many more of them. Traditional plays simply don’t have enough parts in them which is why the nativity play at the end of the film ‘Love Actually’ even has an octopus and a whale in the cast, singing ‘Catch a falling star’.
So are we in danger of forgetting the main point of the Christmas story by making all the subsidiary characters more interesting and giving them all the best lines? Well I guess the first thing to be said to my putative Times letter writer is that this phenomenon isn’t new. Take the ox and the ass for example, or for that matter the inn keeper and his wife. There’s no mention of them in the Gospel. They are only there by implication. Ever since the gospels were first written down the story has been growing. So in the medieval mystery plays the story of the shepherds includes a baddie called Mak who steals a lamb and hides it in a cradle and when the other shepherds come to his house he and his wife pretend it’s a new baby. The symbolism is clearly important: in a parody of the familiar story we find a lamb in a cradle. In the true story the babe lying in the manger was to become known as the Lamb of God. Eighteenth century Neapolitans were less theological. A crib has survived from that period, which contains 180 additional human characters, 42 angels, 29 animals, as well as various shops next to the inn selling fruit, vegetables and salami.
We might think that octopuses and salami are really too much for this story to bear; the real meaning of Christmas has been lost under an excessive overlay of materialism. But you could look at it in another way. The Christian religion is at its heart inclusive. From the moment those two completely contrasted set of characters – the shepherds and the wise men – found their way into the stable, the story opens itself out to the world. The modern nativity play is simply following that lead. It isn’t that we’ve got bored with the story, it isn’t that we need a new angle to make it more interesting, it is because we want to bring more and more aspects of our lives and our world to the manger.
That is why we will be saying in a moment that we believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church. So many people ask me why we say we believe in the catholic church when we belong to the Church of England. But the word catholic in the creed doesn’t mean Roman catholic; the word was put into the creed long before the church was divided between catholics and protestants. The word catholic simply means general or universal. It is related to the idea of wholeness. It points to the desire of the church to include everyone.
That could be a dangerous ambition. In the past it has caused terrible abuses of power. And of course we are aware now more than ever before, not only of those who have no faith but of other faiths living side by side with us in a market place of faiths. When we call the church catholic are we implying that the church trying to take over the lot? But that is not what the word catholic implies; catholicity is not about conquest but about hospitality. It is not about exclusion, competition and rivalry; but about reconciliation and respect. We might say it is about accommodation, not in the sense of compromise but in making room for all sorts and conditions of men, women and children. There was no room in the inn, but there is room for everybody in the stable.
The twentieth century saw the birth of a quest for human unity. The formation of the United Nations, and lesser unions in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Arab world, the growth of a system of universal communications, all point to a desire for unity. And yet at the start of the twenty first century war, competition, and inequalities of wealth, education and opportunity seem constantly to frustrate this dream of universal communion. And the church is just as much subject to such frustration. Nevertheless, the church has been dreaming of wholeness for two thousand years. It has learnt to take the long view. And because year after year it tells the same stories so it’s hopes are being constantly renewed. Every year there must be someone new in the stable. And in the presence of a baby, argument or competition or compulsion might almost be said to be blasphemous. Contemplative and companionable silence or quiet conversation is all that is possible or necessary in front of the manger.
There was a medieval legend that the wood of the manger and the wood of the cross were carved from the same tree. And that at its simplest is what Christianity has to offer to a divided world: a manger and a cross – the story of a man’s birth and death, in the light of which we are all equal, we are all welcome, we all invited to share our stories, we are all offered a unity beyond our present comprehension. St John says that this life whose birth we celebrate tonight is the light of the world. It is the light in which to learn truly to see each other and to know that whatever our race, nationality, religion, gender, creed, sexuality, education, age or appearance we are welcome in the stable we are welcomed into the presence of God to take part in his nativity play. Amen.
Stephen Tucker