On Christmas Day, 25 December, Christians in the Western Church celebrate the birth of Jesus – the nativity. This is the Incarnation, when God the creator, entered fully into human life, ‘our God contracted to a span / Incomprehensibly made man’ (Charles Wesley HP109). In Jesus we find ‘Immanuel’ – God with us.

The first day of Christmas is the main festival, but the Christmas season lasts twelve days (until Epiphany on ‘Twelfth Night’). Although shops stop celebrating Christmas at the close of trading just before Christmas, and carols and winter holiday songs are no longer the piped music in our stores, it is now that carols are properly in season in church!

The traditional nativity play attempts to join the birth narratives in Luke 2:1-20 and Matthew 1:18 – 2:12 into one dramatised story. These Bible passages do not, however, mention a stable or kings, so the nativity scene has been modified somewhat.

The traditional Christmas service of 9 lessons and carols uses the following Bible readings:

1. Genesis 3:8-19

God tells sinful Adam that he has lost the life of Paradise andthat his seed will bruise the serpent’s head
2. Genesis 22:15-18

God promises to faithful Abraham that in his seed shall all thenations of the earth be blessed
3. Isaiah 9:2-7

The prophet foretells the coming of the Saviour
4. Isaiah 11:1-9

The peace that Christ will bring is foreshown
5. Luke 1:26-38

The angel Gabriel salutes the blessed Virgin Mary
6. Luke 2:1-7

St Luke tells of the birth of Jesus
7. Luke 2:8-16

The shepherds go to the manger
8. Matthew 2:1-12

The wise men are led by the star to Jesus
9. John 1:1-14

St John unfolds the great mystery of the Incarnation