Two Gospels, two halves of the story
Only two of the four Gospels tell the story of the birth of JESUS, and they tell different parts of it. A school nativity play blends them into one.
Luke's Gospel has the angel GABRIEL visiting MARY in NAZARETH, the Roman CENSUS that sends her and JOSEPH to BETHLEHEM, the BABY wrapped in SWADDLING cloths and laid in a MANGER because there was no room, and the SHEPHERDS told by an ANGEL, joined by angels singing Glory to God in the highest — the GLORIA, as it later became in Latin. Matthew's Gospel has none of that. It has the STAR, the WISE MEN from the east bringing GOLD, frankincense and MYRRH, and King HEROD, whose threat sends the family fleeing to Egypt. Herod is known to have died around 4 BC, so historians generally place the birth of Jesus a few years before the year numbered one. Christians believe the child is the Son of God, born to Mary without a human father.
Nobody says there were three
Matthew never says how many wise men came. Three became the usual number because there are three gifts. He does not call them kings either; that idea, and the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, were added by later tradition. They are also usually shown arriving at the stable, though Matthew has them visiting a house, perhaps some time after the birth.
The DONKEY, the ox and the CAMEL are not in either Gospel. The ox and the donkey came from a line in the book of Isaiah about animals knowing their master's manger, and artists added them early on. The HALO around the heads of the holy family is a convention of art, used from the fourth century to show holiness.
The inn may have been a spare room
Luke says there was no room for them in the kataluma, a Greek word translated as inn in most older English Bibles. The same word is used later in Luke for the upper room of the Last Supper, and many scholars now read it as the guest room of a family house. In village homes of the time animals were often brought indoors at night to a lower level, with a manger cut into the floor.
So the INN, the STABLE and the unkind INNKEEPER — who is not mentioned at all — may owe more to later retellings than to the text. The version most people know grew over centuries, and each generation's retelling added a little.
Saint Francis made the first crib scene
In 1223, at the Italian village of Greccio, Francis of Assisi set up a manger with hay and a live ox and donkey in a cave, and held a Christmas service there so people could see what the birth might have looked like. It is usually named as the first nativity scene.
The idea spread across Europe. Naples became famous for elaborate cribs with whole towns of tiny figures, and in Provence little clay figures called santons still include village characters — a baker, a fishwife — alongside the holy family. Our Christmas page covers the rest of the season's traditions.