Nativity Play Script

Producing a community Christmas pageant once a year can be a daunting challenge for amateur local organizers. It helps a great deal if they have a pre-prepared nativity play script to work from.

One popular approach is to present the Christmas story as a pantomime, with the actors having few speaking parts to remember as they act out the story told by a narrator. This works especially well if the actors are children for whom a lengthy speaking role would be a challenge. It also facilitates the educational role of the traditional nativity play, which is to remind the audience of the Christian messages linked to the Christmas celebrations.

Extensive use of music in the presentation, particularly with audience participation in the singing of popular Christmas carols, adds greatly to the entertainment value of the nativity play.

One such nativity play script includes extensive guidelines for casting, set design, production and the promotion of the event, as well as comprehensive piano and guitar sheet music and lyrics for appropriate Christmas carols.

A good idea is to round out your Christmas nativity play with biblical costumes appropriate to the Christmas story.

You can get families to create biblical costumes for the performers in your play, but these days many people are very busy in the lead up to Christmas and don't have the time. Also, many of today's families question the benefits of home sewing and dressmaking when mass production has made it relatively cheap to buy costumes ready made. And once you have a stock of costumes, they are there for other occasions through the year, and ready for Christmas next year.

What are some of the costumes you want?

The main characters are Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels and the much loved richly clad Three Wise Men. The cast can also include the Innkeeper, various animals in the stable scene, and perhaps some Roman soldiers and King Herod if you include the Roman Census in the story. Any number of extras in various simple biblical costumes adds to the participation and interest of the performance as the producers of the play may decide.

For some inspirational ideas and to view a selection of biblical costumes click here.

Here are some examples of children's nativity costumes.

One of the better movie productions of the nativity story is the 2006 movie production of The Nativity Story starring Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary and Oscar Isaac as Joseph, among others.

The movie begins with the dramatic horror of murder of the murder of the boy babies in Bethlehem, on the order of King Herod. It then flashes back to the beginnings of the nativity story, with May being told by an angel of her virgin pregnancy and that she will carry the Messiah who will free the Jews of Herod and the Romans supporting him. In the morality codes of those times single mothers were at risk of being stoned, but the man she was promised to, Joseph, agrees to marry her. His support is assured in a later dream confirming who Mary carries.

In those tumultuous times, they needed to travel to Bethlehem for a census. The story then follows how the travels of Mary and Joseph and the Three Wise Men converge on Bethlehem. The Magi, or Three Wise Men, cross the desert to find where three heavenly bodies would merge to mark the spot where the Messiah would be born, which turned out to be at Bethlehem. There, Jesus is born in a stable.

The Three Wise Men foretold the birth of the Messiah to Herod, but later choose not to report back on their discovery of baby Jesus to King Herod, and depart directly for their homelands. Joseph is warned in a dream to flee to Egypt before Herod orders all baby boys in Bethlehem to be slaughtered in his efforts to eliminate the threat of the news that the future "King of the Jews" has been born in Bethlehem.

Because of the scenes portraying the murder of the innocents the movie may not ideal for very young children, but they are bloodless scenes and leave the movie still suitable for families with parental guidance.

As well as showing it to your own family, you might like to give copies of The Nativity Story to your friends to share the Christian Christmas story this year.

Click here for The Nativity Story DVD

If putting on a Christmas nativity play is beyond your resources just now, showing this DVD to your church or other group is an alternative for you to consider.