Rev Canon Dr Rob Marshall - 23/12/2025

Available for over a year

Good morning. Last-minute preparations will be made today in parish churches across the country for tomorrow’s Christmas Eve blessing of the Crib services — one of the most popular, certainly in my own parish, of the year. It’s usually a really happy occasion — with whole families, spanning the generations, arriving in their festive jumpers to gather around the crib. Early Christian art certainly depicted the nativity scene. One of the earliest appears in the catacombs of Priscilla in Rome. There’s also a beautiful fifth-century mosaic in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore, the basilica where Pope Francis is buried. But it was much later in 1223 that Francis of Assisi first brought the Crib scene to life in the small Italian village of Greccio (GRET-cho). He set up a simple manger with hay, real animals, and no baby figure at all — as should be the case until midnight tomorrow — leaving space for the gift of this story to be imagined rather than explained. Today, cribs are made of many different materials and come in all shapes and sizes. My own is a small, hand-carved olive wood set made by Christians in Bethlehem. The much larger one we will bless in our parish church is deeply loved. The expectation around the birth of Jesus reaches a crescendo in the hours ahead, as the Crib once again becomes the focus of what St Luke describes in the wonderful King James Bible translation: “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for him in the inn.” The generations of families gather round the Crib and gaze on the scene. The faithful participate in a variety of ways. They sing. They pray. They light candles. The Crib speaks to everyone differently from year to year. Here is something counter-cultural. The inherent simplicity of the scene, as in the days of St Francis of Assisi, is best left to the imagination. To personal reflection. At the very least, at this time of the year when so much competes for our attention, the Crib asks people of all faiths and none to notice what is small, fragile, and easily overlooked. As the beautiful carol O Little Town of Bethlehem puts it, “how silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.”