Nativity Scenes in the Netherlands

Kerststal, kerstgroep, kribke

Kerststal (“Christmas stable”) is the everyday word for the whole thing, stable and figures. It’s what a Dutch family says.

Kerstgroep (“Christmas group”) is the word collectors and museums use. It means the group of figures as a work of art, with or without a stable. The difference matters: the Dutch collectors’ club is called “Friends of the kerstgroep,” not “of the kerststal,” because its members collect sets from all over the world (from the Andes, Africa, Asia), and many of them have no stable at all.

In North Brabant and Limburg, the local dialect word is kribke (plural kribkes), meaning “little manger.” So a nativity trail there is a kribkesroute rather than the standard Dutch kerststallenroute.

A broken tradition

The Netherlands had nativity scenes very early: Roermond in 1370, Utrecht in 1489, Delft in 1502, Weert in 1520. Museum W in Weert, in Limburg, has a painted oak group from the early 1500s that is considered the oldest surviving nativity scene in northwestern Europe, older than anything of its kind in France.

Then it all stopped. In 1566, Protestant mobs smashed religious images across the country, and with the Reformation the tradition was broken. Nativity scenes didn’t return to Dutch Catholic churches and homes until the 1800s, when Catholics regained their rights.

That’s the big difference from Provence, Italy or Malta. The Dutch home nativity didn’t carry on unbroken. It’s a reintroduction, which helps explain why it looks so different.

A southern affair

North of the great rivers (Holland, Utrecht, Friesland, Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel, Zeeland), the country has been historically Protestant. The south (North Brabant and Limburg) is overwhelmingly Catholic. The nativity belongs mostly to the south, and the map of nativity trails shows it every year.

That’s slowly changing. Today you’ll see nativity collections on display in Protestant churches, welcomed as heritage and folk art from around the world rather than as objects of devotion. One collector who grew up Protestant remembers staring, fascinated, at “the Catholic children’s nativity scenes.” That says a lot about what the nativity meant in the Netherlands for so long: a sign of the other church.

Nativity trails

This is the Dutch tradition above all others, and nowhere else has so many.

A whole village displays its homemade nativity scenes in front windows, yards and porches. You pick up a map and walk the route for free, ideally after dark. The numbers are impressive:

• Liempde (North Brabant) calls itself the biggest: the organizers announce more than three hundred fifty nativity scenes at some three hundred twenty-five addresses. Other counts say more than two hundred thirty.
• Baarn (Utrecht) has more than four hundred.
• Epe (Gelderland) lines up more than ninety, Meijel (Limburg) eighty-eight.
• Schimmert, Epen and Schin op Geul cover South Limburg, and the Simpelveld – Bocholtz – Orsbach trail crosses the German border.

They all run around the same time, from mid-December to the first days of January. It’s an idea any American neighborhood could borrow.

The great church nativities

Saint John’s Cathedral in ‘s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) sets up its nativity every year in the walkway behind the altar. What makes it unique: real taxidermy animals, first added after World War II, with many more added between 1979 and 1999. Since 2014, an artist has given it a new theme each year.

In Beverwijk, in North Holland (Protestant country), Saint Agatha’s Church says it has the largest nativity in the Netherlands. About twenty volunteers start in September to build an entire Bethlehem market, complete with a fox eyeing two lambs and a big black spider hidden somewhere for kids to find.

Museums and association

There’s no national nativity museum in the Netherlands. However:

• Museum Catharijneconvent, in Utrecht, brings out an 18th-century Neapolitan nativity of about six hundred figures every December, with clay heads, wooden limbs and embroidered silk costumes. And it’s set in Utrecht: Bethlehem beneath the Dom Tower, the old Winkel van Sinkel department store as the inn, the Oudegracht flower market. Neapolitan figures in a Dutch city: that alone is worth the trip. Seeing the nativity is free.
• Museum W, in Weert, keeps the 16th-century oak nativity in its permanent exhibition.
• The Stadsmuseum Vollenhove (Overijssel) and the National Tin Figure Museum in Ommen both hold exhibitions of nativity scenes from around the world every winter. The ones in Ommen are made of pewter.

The collectors’ club, Vrienden van de Kerstgroep Nederland, was founded in 1994 and has about a hundred fifty members. It publishes the magazine De Kerstgroep twice a year and has put out a book on its members’ collections. It’s based in Houten and belongs to the international federation. Its website is in Dutch only and its calendar is out of date, so check with local tourist offices for dates. The places we were able to check one by one (Utrecht, Den Bosch, Liempde, Amsterdam) are on where to see nativity scenes in the Netherlands.