Christmas D – Christmas crib

Christmas

Christmas cribs – a depiction of Christ’s Nativity

There are many different artistic representations of the Nativity in the history of art. The most common are frescoes, but there are also paintings and sculptures. A distinct category is the arranged scene of the birth of Christ with human figures, animals (especially sheep, together with the ox and the ass) and the Star of Bethlehem – collectively known as a crib or Nativity scene. Pictorial representations, therefore, are not cribs, although some collectors and researchers wrongly interpret them as such and include them in the development of crib-making. The making of cribs began to develop in the second half of the sixteenth century, in Portugal. The first Christmas cribs in Slovenia were in towns and castles. It was not until the late eighteenth/early nineteenth century that this creative activity began to be widespread in rural areas, giving rise to a wide variety of typological variants. In 2001 the Society of Nativity Scene Enthusiasts was established. It is based in Brezje, where the Nativity Museum is also located.

Janez Bogataj