Opening hours:
Tuesday - Sunday: 10:00-18:00
Opening hours:
Tuesday - Sunday: 10:00-18:00
In a more basic sense, nativity scenes are figurative ornaments depicting the birth of Jesus Christ. They consist of the Holy Child Jesus lying in a straw or a manger, and Mary and Joseph placed on various landscape and ambivalent backdrops, hence the names Bethlehem and Tabernacle or Stable. The presence of other figures is varied, but apart from the Holy Family, the most striking are the ox and the donkey, the shepherds, the three kings (mudraci, "magi"), the angel, the Bethlehem star and the inscription "Gloria in excelsis Deo".
Nativity scene, Obrezina, Šćitarjevo, 1995, Mato Mihinica, EMZ 48410
Various other crib devotees are known and popular, and their number varies depending on the place of manufacture and the size of the nativity scene. Today larger nativities often feature various scenes from local everyday life. Gingerbread nativity scene, Osijek, 2009, Antonija Ranogajec, EMZ 48721
Gingerbread nativity scene, Osijek, 2009, Antonija Ranogajec, EMZ 48721
The human figures are equipped with props that indicate who they are or what they do: shepherds carry a shepherd’s crook and are accompanied by a lamb, kings/wise men have crowns on their heads and carry gifts, pilgrims hold a pilgrim’s staff, milkmaids carry buckets of milk, and so on. The settings depict Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’s birth. However, nativities of Central European origin often do not strive to appear Oriental and instead represent the people, environments, and landscapes of the places where they were made.
Nativity figures from the Chapel of St Roch in Kumrovec, Kumrovec, 18th century (?), EMZ 16891
Nativity scenes are placed in homes at Christmas time, usually on Christmas Eve on December 24, and they remain on display until Epiphany on January 6. Today they are usually placed under the Christmas tree, while in the past they were most commonly positioned in a corner of the main room in the house, or sometimes on a shelf on the wall above the table, or in some other important and visible place in the home.
Corner-type nativity scene, Plemenšćina, Klenovnik, 2001, Stanko Bunić, EMZ 48739
It is not wrong to define the nativity scene as an object whose function is devotional and which serves to promote personal piety, but it should be known that its original function was didactic. Today’s cribs have broken this framework and multiplied their purpose, which is reinforced by the process of their “exit” from religious buildings.
“Betlem,” a prop carried in the “betlemari” door-to-door practice, Đurđevac, 1988, Đuka Tomerlin – Picok, EMZ 28383
Its origin is connected with the veneration of a devotional object, the figure of the infant Jesus; the custom of “rocking baby Jesus”; medieval Christmas performances such as that of St Francis of Assisi, who in 1223 set up a manger made of straw near the altar in the woods near Greccio and brought there a donkey and an ox; Epiphany games; and visual, especially sculptural, representations of the birth of Jesus. However, plays, games, popular “nativity” dramas, and artistic representations cannot be directly associated with nativity scenes in the modern sense, except as a kind of precursor.
The figure of the infant Jesus inside a monstrance, Italy (?), around 1900, EMZ 62295
