Christmas gift giving & the Nativity

The idea of giving gifts on December 25 rather than December 6 is generally attributed to Martin Luther, the German priest who sparked the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. Emphasizing the importance of a direct relationship with God, Luther and his followers rejected religious art, particularly icons of saints, as idolatrous distractions from faith-based worship.

“As part of [Luther’s] trying to counter the veneration of the saints as a central element of daily Christian practice, he proposed moving the giving of gifts from Saint Nicholas,” Kolb says. This shift, he adds, aligned with the reformer’s vision of God as a “good, giving parent.”

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The Nativity narrative known today only emerged in the seventh century, with the circulation of what was believed to be an unknown Gospel by Matthew. (The text was later refuted as apocryphal.) “What’s fascinating about the evolution of the Nativity scene tradition is that although the story has its origins in the Gospels, the imagery of the birth of Christ that is now commonplace in art and church displays has post-biblical roots,” says Vanessa Corcoran, a historian at Georgetown University.

Before the Pseudo-Matthew Gospel provided a richer narrative, religious art centered on Jesus’s birth drew on the few details provided by the biblical Gospels. One of the oldest known renderings of the Adoration of the Magi, or the Epiphany, as the wise men’s visit is also known, is a late third- or early fourth-century wall painting in the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome. The work shows a seated Mary holding her baby as she receives gifts from the Magi.

What Nativity Scenes Tell Us About the Evolution of Christianity by Kathleen Brady