THE Nativity play debate has been going on for some time now. Are schools really under pressure to call their Christmas plays “winter celebrations”? Is it a fear of embracing our multi-cultural society or merely updating the plays to an environment that our children today can relate to? Many schools have swapped the traditional Nativity play in favour of secular plays, to include their pupils of different faiths. Pop stars, footballers, comedy characters, even spacemen and punk fairies have featured in the modern “Christmas plays”, with the traditional carol replaced with upbeat Christmas songs. The word nativity quite simply means “the occasion of a person’s birth”, hence, the Christmas Nativity, relates to the birth of Christ. Parents, even those who are not particularly religious, find the Nativity a comforting part of Christmas and steers their children away from the commercial messages about presents and Santa.

With this message in mind, Looking Back will, this week, be featuring three pictures of traditional school Nativity plays from 1986.

Our first is a scene from St Ethelbert RC School’s Nativity play, “The Crown of Stars”, which they presented in the school hall, December 1986.