Religious and political anxieties have been reflected in nativity plays from the beginning
AS BRITONS PREPARE for the first December general election since 1923, some of the difficulties of a winter poll are clear: freezing temperatures, blasting gales and rumours of snow. One problem with the chosen date was more unexpected. Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, wrote a letter to local authorities requesting that schools should not be closed and used as polling stations if it meant they would be forced to cancel their Christmas nativity plays.
The first nativities that would be recognisable as such today, performed in churches in the early 13th century, were beset by anxiety about whether the Latin dialogue should be translated into the vernacular. Use of Latin upheld the church’s prestige and mystique, but English versions were beloved by the largely illiterate population, and so were grudgingly tolerated.
The tensions over the translation and content of the nativity lay at the heart of the religious disquiet which would later erupt in the Reformation. After it, in the 17th century, the subversive rowdiness of the plays made them a target of Oliver Cromwell’s efforts to purify the nation of its dissolute indulgences .
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