Nostalgia: Nativity plays: A time-honoured Christmas ritual

Published on Saturday 12 December 2009 10:27

THE Corstorphine Road Nativity might be the latest big sensation packing them in at the King's Theatre, but it is based on a time-honoured school tradition.

The play, by Calendar Girls writer Tim Firth, takes a peek behind the scenes at a school nativity play, exploring the world of cardboard props, fluffed lines and unrequited love.

But while the play might be the latest big thing on the professional stage, it is a ritual familiar to generations of Edinburgh schoolchildren. Every December, parents and teachers pull out the tinsel, tea towels and table cloths to fashion something resembling Biblical fashions to drape around their children as they take to the stage and re-enact the Nativity.

In 1960 the youngsters of the Challenger Lodge for crippled children assembled an impressive stable of animals to complete their nativity scene, including a plastic lamb and a furry dog on wheels to accompany the wise men, while the angels enjoyed particularly voluminous skirts as they perched on high behind the crib.

Saughtonhall Congregational Church's cast might not have run into thousands but it was certainly quite a number which gathered around the straw bales for their nativity in 1967. The young lad wearing pyjamas and clutching leather gloves is a mysterious addition to the traditional tableau, but one of the older performers at the back is sporting an authentic-looking turban.

The following year Juniper Green Primary School was in the spotlight, with a cast gazing intently into the crib, bearing another staple of the school nativity – the well-swaddled plastic doll on a bed of straw.

In 1975 Mary looked slightly unimpressed as she stared at her offspring surrounded by a grand array of Seventies stripy curtains, but there was no doubting the devotion of the hoard of angels as they looked over the scene.

One tiny member of the angelic hoard at Camelon House Nursery got through the strain of performance with the aid of a little thumb-sucking in the 1970s, but nonetheless remained cute enough to melt the hardest of hearts – which is, after all, what it's all about.