What Is a Nativity Play? A Guide for Primary Schools

Written and reviewed by the Starshine Music editorial team — teachers, composers and editors whose nativity musicals are staged by more than 14,000 UK schools.

The quick answer

A nativity play is a short dramatised retelling of the birth of Jesus, performed by children in primary schools, nurseries and churches in the weeks before Christmas. The word comes from the Latin nativitas, meaning "birth".

Modern school nativities are usually musicals, with the story carried by songs as much as by dialogue. That makes an enormous difference to young children, who remember a melody far more readily than a block of text. Three things set a school nativity apart from a church pageant: every child takes part, the music does the heavy lifting, and the whole thing has to be produceable by a class teacher with no specialist training, in the busiest half term of the year.

A short history

The familiar claim that nativity plays began in 1223 is only half the story.

• 10th and 11th centuries. Before there were nativity plays there were sung liturgical dramas, performed by clergy inside the church. The Officium Pastorum staged the shepherds' visit to the manger as part of Christmas worship, in Latin, chanted rather than acted, with monks taking the roles.

• 1223, Greccio. St Francis of Assisi assembled a live crib scene in an Italian cave, complete with hay, an ox and a donkey. It was a tableau rather than a play, with no script and no dialogue. What Francis popularised was the nativity scene, the ancestor of the crib in the church porch and the ceramic set on the mantelpiece.

• 13th to 16th centuries. The two traditions came together as drama moved out of the church, into English, and into the hands of the town guilds. The great mystery cycles at York, Chester, Wakefield and N-Town all included nativity episodes, performed on pageant wagons. The finest of them, the Wakefield Second Shepherds' Play, spends most of its length on a broad comedy about a sheep stealer before turning, in its closing minutes, to the manger. If you have ever wondered whether a funny nativity is quite the done thing, take heart: comedy is the oldest tradition in the form.

• 16th to 20th centuries. The Reformation put a stop to the English cycles under Elizabeth I, and they disappeared for some three hundred years. The Victorian reinvention of Christmas brought the crib scene back, and the growth of elementary education gave the play a new home in the school hall, where it has stayed ever since.
  
  

The main elements of a nativity play

Almost every nativity, however inventive, is built from the same handful of components.

Mary and Joseph come from both Luke and Matthew, and you need one of each. Both roles carry fewer lines than most parents expect, since the part is mostly presence, and casting them as a pair helps two children share the nerves. The angel Gabriel, from Luke, is the one named angel and wants a clear speaker. Beyond Gabriel, the wider host of angels can run from four to twenty or more, which makes it one of the most useful roles for absorbing a large cohort. Shepherds, also from Luke, usually number between three and twelve and give you good group speaking opportunities. Sheep and the other stable animals are traditional rather than biblical, work in any number at all, and remain the classic first role for the very youngest, not least because they are so easy to costume.

From Matthew come the wise men, traditionally three, though they grow happily with the addition of attendants and pages, and the star, which is often played by a chorus rather than a soloist. Matthew also gives us King Herod, a single role that suits a confident older performer. The innkeeper is a tradition rather than scripture, but he is comic gold and the part can be shared between as many as four children. Narrators, likewise traditional, usually number two to six and are worth giving to your strongest readers, since they carry the spine of the story.

The useful thing to notice here is that the biblical roles are fixed in number, while the traditional and choral roles are not. That is precisely where a script makes room for thirty or sixty children. A production that needs to grow does not invent a fourth wise man. It adds shepherds, angels, stars, sheep and narrators.

What's actually in the Bible

The story comes from two gospels, and they tell noticeably different versions. Luke gives us Gabriel's announcement to Mary, the census, the manger and the shepherds, a story about ordinary people. Matthew gives us the star, the wise men and Herod, a story about kings and danger. The scene we all picture, with shepherds and wise men gathered together at the manger, is a later blending of the two.

Several much loved details turn out to be tradition rather than scripture. There is no stable in the text, only a manger and the absence of room in the kataluma, a word better translated as "guest room". The innkeeper appears in neither gospel and is a medieval invention, though a very useful one for anyone writing a play. The ox and the ass come from a line in Isaiah. And the magi are never numbered or called kings, with three inferred from the three gifts. All worth knowing when a parent asks, and it makes a genuinely good discussion for a KS2 class.

Cast size and running time

How many children can take part?

Almost any number, provided the script is written for it, and this is the first thing to check rather than the last. Across the Starshine range the smallest workable cast is 12, in A Little Nativity, which is plenty for a nursery or Sunday school. A typical single class sits at 25 to 30, and every title scales to 60 or more. Schools often go further still. One Essex school staged Babushka with close to 100 children after losing rehearsal time to snow days, and a Somerset primary of just 27 pupils performed The Raggedy King as a whole school show.

Three script features make scaling painless, and they are well worth looking for:

• Group speaking. Lines given to "Shepherds" or "Children" rather than to named individuals can be delivered by three children or thirty, and they take a great deal of the anxiety out of learning lines.

• Split and share roles. Noisy Nativity is built so that its two central children can be played by up to seventeen pairs.

• Doubling notes. Home For Christmas lists a minimum of 22 with doubling, against a natural cast of 30 to 60+.

How long should it be?

Let the age of your cast set the length, rather than the ambition of the production. The real constraint is rehearsal stamina and concentration on the day.

For nursery and EYFS children of three to five, aim for fifteen to twenty minutes. KS1, ages five to seven, will comfortably manage twenty to thirty. Lower KS2, ages seven to nine, can hold twenty five to thirty five minutes, and upper KS2, ages nine to eleven, will sustain anything from thirty five to fifty.

Two adjustments are easy to overlook. Add time for size as well as age, because a thirty minute script with eighty children in it will run closer to forty. And do count the getting on and getting off, since transitions between numbers cause far more chaos on the day than any forgotten line.

Choosing by key stage

• EYFS, ages 3 to 5. Put songs ahead of dialogue, and choose costumes the children can manage themselves. I Spy Christmas tells the whole story through song in 15 minutes, so pre-readers never have to rely on remembering lines. A Wriggly Nativity is written for children who simply cannot sit still, and turns that into the point of the show.

• KS1, ages 5 to 7. The richest band of all. Look for lots of small speaking parts rather than a few large ones, because that spread is what keeps thirty families happy. Little Angel Gets Her Wings offers 17 or more smaller parts, and The Donkey Seller offers 18 to 22.

• KS2, ages 7 to 11. Older children respond far better to a show that takes them seriously. The Match Girl's Christmas weaves Andersen's tale together with the nativity, and Home For Christmas tackles homelessness head on.

• Whole school. Jesus' Christmas Party comes with two complete scripts, for ages 5 to 7 and 7 to 10, so one show can run across phases. Giving KS2 the speaking roles and narration, and EYFS and KS1 the choral numbers and closing tableau, works beautifully.

Every Starshine nativity compared

Our nativities span ages three to twelve and run from fifteen minutes to fifty, so it helps to start with the length you have room for.

The shortest shows, fifteen to twenty minutes. I Spy Christmas is our briefest at fifteen minutes, with seven songs, written for ages three to six and a cast of twenty upwards. A Little Nativity runs twenty minutes with nine songs for the same age group, and needs only twelve children, making it the most compact in the range. Also at twenty minutes are Noisy Nativity, eight songs for ages four to eight with a cast from twenty five, and This Way To Bethlehem, six songs for ages four to seven, again from twenty five.

The twenty five minute shows. This is the largest group. A Wriggly Nativity has nine songs for ages three to seven and works from twenty children. The Raggedy King offers ten songs for ages four to seven and needs as few as eighteen. For ages five to seven there is Little Angel Gets Her Wings with nine songs and NOT Such A Silent Night! with seven, both from a cast of thirty. Two titles come with a choice of script: Little Star's Story, seven songs, for ages five to seven or six to nine, and The Sleepy Stargazer, eight songs, for ages five to seven or seven to nine.

Still at twenty five minutes, A Tale Of Two Birthdays brings eight songs and two dances for ages five to eight. Babushka has seven songs plus a dance for ages five to nine, as does A Way In A Manger, which reaches furthest up the school at ages six to eleven and beyond. The Donkey Seller offers nine songs and Magical Christmas Journey eight, both for ages five to nine. All of these work from a cast of thirty upwards.

The half hour shows. Christmas Recipe runs thirty minutes with nine songs for ages five to eight. The Snow Child matches it with nine songs for ages five to nine. Jesus' Christmas Party also runs thirty minutes, with six songs plus two extra manger songs, and comes with two complete scripts covering ages five to seven and seven to ten, which is why it works so well as a whole school production. It needs only twenty children as a minimum.

The longer KS2 shows. The Match Girl's Christmas runs thirty five minutes with nine interwoven songs and carols, for ages seven to eleven. Miracle Child runs forty minutes with nine songs for ages eight to twelve, and is unusual in the range for suiting a compact cast of twenty four to thirty. Home For Christmas is our longest at fifty minutes with thirteen songs, again for ages eight to twelve, and can be staged with as few as twenty two if you double up parts.

Every title above scales to sixty children or more unless noted otherwise, and you can hear every song in full on our primary school nativities page before you buy.

Licensing: what schools need to know

Buying a script gives you the materials, but not the right to perform them in public. For virtually all published nativity musicals a performing licence is required in addition to the purchase, and a school hall full of parents does count as a public performance, even when no tickets have been sold. Download packs are licensed to the purchasing school alone. If you are planning to film the show or share it with families online, do check that separately before you press record. Our licences and copyright page sets out the details.

Frequently asked questions

Not sure which show would suit your year group? Our team are all experienced teachers and would be very happy to talk it through with you.

Tel: 01323 508881 Email: office@starshine.co.uk

About Starshine Music

Starshine Music Ltd has published musicals, nativities and children's songs since 2003. Every script is written by experienced teachers who understand the pressures in schools today, and every title is trialled in schools and other settings before release.