Many people in Britain know little about the nativity
Rushda:
December 10th, 2007
Despite most Britons still celebrating Christmas with the same kind of vigour as before, a new study has found that fewer and fewer people know the details of the birth of Christ. Indeed the survey has suggested that “more than a quarter of adults in Britain do not know where Jesus was born.”
The survey was conducted for public theology think tank Theos, which found that only 27% were able to identify Bethlehem as Jesus’ birthplace. The same percentage also accounts for those who did not know who told Mary that she was about to have a son. Young people were affected the most as around one-third of them could not say much about the birth of Christ. According to Paul Woolley, director of Theos:
“The fact that younger people are the least knowledgeable about the Christmas story may reflect a decline in the telling of Bible stories in schools and the popularity of nativity plays. No one seriously thinks that being a Christian or a member of the established church is the same thing as being British today. But, at the same time, if we are serious about social cohesion we can’t afford to ignore the stories that have bound us together as a culture for 1,000 years.”
Personally, what I find particularly dismaying is that traditional Christmas does seem to be vanishing from schools as well, with only 1 in 5 schools putting on a nativity play this year. For me, the yearly nativity play was an indispensable aspect of school life as a child and I always waited for it impatiently, regardless of whether I believed the story was true. It seems a shame, therefore, that so many children will miss out on all the features of it which made it so great - the festivities, the community spirit, and the general excitement which accompanies it.
Though I am not a Christian myself, I empathise with those who think that there would be something lost if people started forgetting about the traditional story of the birth of Christ. A little bit of thought behind the festivities would certainly not go amiss for anyone.
December 11th, 2007 at 6:29 am
Whilst I agree that the nativity plays at school were great fun, I disagree that they were a necessary condition for having fun. All the “festivities, the community spirit, and … general excitement” can be had in any number of non-Nativity school plays - and indeed only one play at my school was ever religious. Whilst it is sad for people to forget such an ancient myth, this is a tragedy separate from whether or not schools put on Nativity plays. R.E. lessons can keep kids knowledgeable of traditions, and in my mind there are far more exciting school plays to be put on than the Nativity.
December 11th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Of course I’m sure you can have a lot of fun with other plays, but in my school we had countless other ones but none really stuck in my mind so much. Perhaps it was the repetition of the same one each year with all the Christmas carols (and it was simple enough for little old me to understand!) but whatever the reason, I’m sure if I hadn’t watched or been in so many nativity plays (yes, even when I was a lamb), I would have definitely missed out. As for being taught it in R.E. - that would never have entertained me quite so much. In fact, being non-religious I would have been intensely bored, I just liked the funky story when acted out.