CRIB, CHRISTMAS

St. Jerome (d. 420) believed that the manger-crib of Christ was molded in clay [Christmas homily, Anecdota Maredsolana (Maredsous-Oxford 1897) 3.2:393]. It is more likely it was carved into the rock of the stable-cave of bethlehem. The Roman basilica of St. Mary Major has five small boards of Levantine sycamore venerated as the crib of Christ. If the actual crib was of clay or stone, these would have formed a subsidiary part. The basilica has possessed the boards, supposedly, since the 7th century, but John the Deacon the Younger, writing about 1169, was the first to attest to their presence at the basilica (Liber de Ecclesia Lateranense 15; Patrologia Latina 194:1543–50).

A century before the presumed acquisition of the relics, and perhaps as early as the 5th century, when Sixtus III reconstructed St. Mary Major, the basilica had a small oratory built like the cave of Bethlehem. Hence the basilica's secondary title, applied at least by the mid-6th century, S. Maria ad Praesepe or ad Praesepem. Hence also the designation of the chapel, at least by the 7th century, as the station for the first papal Mass at Christmas.

The "crib" as a synonym for the whole nativity scene is normally restricted to plastic representations. The scene was often depicted in Roman Christian sarcophagal sculptures; and the earliest datable Roman relief (343) already pictures the ox and the ass, following the faulty interpretation of Is 1.3, which ch. 15 of Pseudo-marble group carved by Arnolfo di Cambio (1232?–1302), when he remodeled the oratory of the crib in St. Mary Major. (Since the 17th century, both crib and oratory have occupied the crypt in the church's Sistine Chapel).

However, it was St. francis of assisi who really launched the crib devotion with his presepio at Greccio in 1223. Promoted by the Franciscans and other religious, the custom spread widely on the Continent after the 14th century. By the dawn of the baroque era, the crib setting had become an intricate scenic landscape, and numerous secular figures were now added to those of the Holy Family, shepherds, and Magi. Crib-making thus developed into an important folk art, especially in Portugal, in the Tyrol, and most of all in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where it was actively patronized by Charles III de Bourbon (d. 1788).

The home crib became popular in Catholic Europe after 1600, owing, it is said, to the efforts of the Capuchins. Except for the crib (the "putz") of the pietist Moravians, manger-building was not originally adopted by Protestants. Pre-Reformation England had had its own crib custom, that of baking the Christmas mince pie in an oblong manger shape to cradle an image of the Child. The British Puritans, therefore, in outlawing Christmas, declared particular war on mince pie as "idolatrie in crust."

Finally, missionaries to the natives and immigrants from various European countries also brought their crib customs to the Americas.

Bibliography: n. de robeck, The Christmas Crib (Milwaukee 1956). d. j. foley, Little Saints of Christmas: The Santons of Provence (Boston 1959). f. x. weiser, The Christmas Book (New York 1952).

[r. f. mcnamara/eds.]