ASSOCIATIONS
Nativity Associations Around the World
In many countries, building nativity scenes is an organized hobby, with clubs, classes, contests, and magazines that have been around for a century. An international federation has linked them since 1952; today it has twenty-one member associations, including one in the United States: Friends of the Creche.
An organized pursuit
In Germany, Austria, Catalonia, Italy and the Czech Republic, tens of thousands of people build nativity scenes as organized amateurs: they join clubs, take classes, exhibit every Advent, put out magazines and meet at conventions. Catalonia has sixty-nine associations and more than fifteen thousand members. Austria even awards a title of master nativity builder, with a course of study and an exam.
France works differently. There, the nativity is mostly a family tradition and the santon is a craft: the santon maker makes the figures, and the family sets them up. There’s no national federation, no course of study, no specialty magazine, and only one French association belongs to the international federation. The United States is somewhere in between: no national tradition of building, but a lively community of collectors, brought together since 1999 by Friends of the Creche.
The most telling word is Spanish: belenismo, the art of building nativity scenes, and belenista, someone who does it. In Catalan it’s pessebrisme, recognized as part of Catalonia’s cultural heritage in 2022. In German it’s Krippenbau, nativity building. English has no single word for it, though the Moravian putz builders of Pennsylvania come close.
The international federation
Un.Foe.Prae (Universalis Foederatio Praesepistica, the world nativity federation) was founded in Barcelona on May 31, 1952, at a meeting of seven associations. It’s still based in Barcelona and now brings together twenty-one associations in Europe and the Americas.
It has two goals: to connect national associations and their members, and to get the art of the nativity scene recognized as UNESCO intangible cultural heritage. An application was filed and presented at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on March 24, 2026: we cover the application, the timeline and France’s role.
It also gives out the top awards in the field, presented at its congresses since 1957; Pope Francis received one in 2020 for his apostolic letter on the nativity scene. And every year it sends its member associations a paper cut-out nativity designed by a different artist; the 2026 edition is by the Dutch artist Aisha de Vaal and shows the regions of the Netherlands.
The world congress is its main gathering: twenty-three so far since 1952, held roughly every four years since 1988. The eleventh took place in Nice in 1982, the only one held in France so far, and the next will be in Austria in 2028. It has its own page: the world nativity congress.
The twenty-one member associations
Listed by country, as the federation lists them. The notes are what we could confirm on the associations’ own websites; when an association has no working website, we say so instead of linking to a dead page.
| Association | Notes | Website |
|---|---|---|
| Germany | ||
| Landesgemeinschaft der Krippenfreunde in Rheinland und Westfalen | Rhineland and Westphalia · centenary celebrated in 2025 | krippenverband-nrw.de |
| Verband Bayerischer Krippenfreunde | Bavaria | krippen-bayern.de |
| Austria | ||
| Verband der Krippenfreunde Österreichs | founded in 1954 · nine regional associations | krippe.at |
| Belgium | ||
| Association Belge des Amis de la Crèche | founded in 1991 · German-speaking, East Cantons | verband-der-krippenfreunde-belgiens.be |
| Brazil | ||
| Istituto Cultural e Presepista Ilha de Santa Catarina | Florianópolis | no known website |
| Colombia | ||
| Corporación El Taller del Pesebre de Antioquia | Medellín | eltallerdelpesebre.org |
| Spain | ||
| Federación Española de Belenistas | founded in 1963 · some 80 associations | anunciata.es |
| Federació Catalana de Pessebristes | 69 associations, more than 15,000 members | pessebrescat.cat |
| Associació de Pessebristes de Barcelona | Barcelona | no known website |
| Asociación Belenista de Gipúzkoa | founded in 1947 · Basque Country | asociacionbelenistadegipuzkoa.com |
| United States | ||
| Friends of the Creche | founded in 1999 · United States and Canada | friendsofthecreche.org |
| France | ||
| Association Française des Amis de la Crèche | founded in 1978 · Nice | afac-nice.fr |
| Italy | ||
| Associazione Italiana Amici del Presepio | journal “Il Presepio” since 1953 | presepio.it |
| Verein der Krippenfreunde Südtirols | South Tyrol, German-speaking | krippenfreunde.bz |
| Liechtenstein | ||
| Verein der Krippenfreunde Liechtensteins | founded in 1983 | krippenfreunde.li |
| Malta | ||
| Għaqda Ħbieb tal-Presepju | Gozo and Malta, since 1985 | presepjumalta.org |
| Netherlands | ||
| Vrienden van de Kerstgroep Nederland | journal “De Kerstgroep” | website.vriendenvandekerstgroep.nl |
| Peru | ||
| Belenes en el Perú | — | no known website |
| Slovenia | ||
| Društvo ljubiteljev jaslic Slovenije | founded in 2001 | jaslice.rkc.si |
| Switzerland | ||
| Schweizerische Vereinigung der Krippenfreunde | — | no known website |
| Czech Republic | ||
| České sdružení přátel betlémů | founded in 1990 · based at the Třebechovice museum | sdruzenibetlemaru.cz |
A common mix-up. The Association Belge des Amis de la Crèche has a French name, but it’s German-speaking: it’s based in Büllingen, in Belgium’s East Cantons, and works in German, not in French-speaking Wallonia or Brussels. Its website does have some excellent pages on nativity history in French, though.
In France: the AFAC
France is represented by the Association Française des Amis de la Crèche (AFAC), founded in 1978 and based in Nice. Its president is Michèle Benvenutti; it holds weekly workshops and has regional representatives in Île-de-France, Alsace, Brittany, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Languedoc-Roussillon and Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
Two things are worth knowing. First, despite its name, the AFAC is a Nice-based association with a network of local contacts rather than a national federation; France has nothing like Spain’s Federación Española de Belenistas or Austria’s Verband der Krippenfreunde. Second, it doesn’t post much online: as of this writing, its website hasn’t announced anything new since spring 2026.
It also belongs to the Federation of Associations of the County of Nice, the Union Provençale and the European Corporation of Santon Makers, and its website has a useful how-to page on building a nativity: types of nativity scenes, plywood frames, scenery in glued kraft paper or plaster cloth, and thyme for trees.
Association Française des Amis de la Crèche · Nice · afac-nice.fr · membership and contact through their website
What they really do
Here’s what these associations actually do.
| Activity | What it is |
|---|---|
| Classes | Building courses, from a few days to several months. Austria goes as far as the title of Krippenbaumeister, master builder, with a curriculum and an exam. In Belgium, the Krippana school teaches the Eastern nativity as well as the regional one, and offers a module on Provençal santons. |
| Exhibitions | Every Advent, village by village. They’re what fills the calendar of events abroad. You look; you don’t buy. |
| Journals | The Austrian Krippenfreund has been published since 1909. Il Presepio, in Italy, since 1953, four times a year. There’s no French equivalent. |
| Contests | Photography, paper cut-out nativities, Christmas poetry. In Catalonia and Spain, they set the rhythm of the associations’ year. |
| Outings | Liechtenstein’s Krippeleschauen (literally “going to see the nativities”) are group excursions in fall and winter. |
Joining
All of these associations welcome individual members, and dues are low: twenty-one euros a year for the Rhineland-Westphalia association, twenty-six for a family. None of them expects you to have experience: the whole idea is that you learn by doing.
For American readers, the natural place to start is Friends of the Creche, which covers the United States and Canada and holds conventions and exhibitions open to the public. Beyond that: the AFAC in France, the Belgian association if you don’t mind German (its building school is the best documented of all), and the world congress, which is open to individual enthusiasts as well as associations.
Page current as of September 13, 2026. Membership figures and founding dates are those published by the associations themselves.