Keep Christ in your Manger Scene

by Fr. John Granato  |  12/17/2023  |  Words from Fr. John

My Dear Friends,

During this time of the year many people put up manger scenes in their homes. The manger, or also called the crèche, is a beautiful tradition where we place figurines of the important people surrounding the baby Jesus. The manger scene can also be a painting or an icon besides something physical with statues or figurines. Most scenes have at the barest minimum the baby Jesus and his parents, Mary and Joseph.

The next figurines would be some of the animals, e.g. sheep, cows and donkeys. Then there is a shepherd and maybe a little drummer boy. Then we also have the three kings, but tradition is not clear on when the kings (wise men) had arrived bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. With the wise men also come camels. Some crèches will have an angel above the manger, and in some Mexican scenes there is also a demon hovering nearby the manger. Besides the manger being a home decoration, mangers have also been placed in the sanctuary near the altar of our Catholic churches. In every assignment that I have had, our decorating committee has set up a manger scene for the parishioners to meditate on when visiting a church. Most of the time the manger scene is put up before Christmas Eve because of the time it takes to decoration the church for the celebration of Christmas Mass. Other manger scenes are in front of the church or office building for a few weeks before Christmas Eve. And every year I have to explain how I want the manger scene to be filled. What I mean is that in front of churches (Catholic and Protestant) and inside churches, many people place Mary and Joseph around an empty space. The argument is that the baby Jesus does not arrive until Christmas so we need to keep that space empty until the vigil of Christmas. I disagree with this.

If you choose to keep the baby Jesus out of the manger, then you must also keep Mary and Joseph out of the manger. Otherwise what happens is that you have a very non-pregnant Mary and Joseph adoring and empty space. If Jesus has not come yet, then Mary must be seen as pregnant for it to make sense. Despite the fact that if we keep the baby Jesus out of the manger scene and allow Mary and Joseph to remain in the scene adoring empty space we are in a sense falling for the heresy of Docetism, one of the earliest heresies in the early Christian church that affirms that Jesus did not have a real or natural body but was a phantom or a spirit.

Keep Christ in Christmas and keep Christ in the manger scene.