Your Nativity Scene Probably Isn't Accurate. Here's Why

Publish date: 2021-11-23

The inaccuracy of most nativity scenes in the U.S. that has had the most enduring negative effect is the complexion of the holy family. In most cases, Jesus, Joseph, and Mary have fair skin, blue eyes, rosy-red cheeks, and (in some cases) blond hair. That's a product of 19th-century America, according to Edward Blum, San Diego State University religion professor and co-author of "The Color of Christ," who told The Washington Post that evangelical Protestants ran with a fake letter that "depicted [Jesus'] face as warm with some redness to his cheeks." The fraudulent letter is also where depictions of Jesus having long, parted hair comes from. "In the early 19th century, American Protestants fell in love with it," said Blum.

However, some are willing to let the ethnicity and experience of Jesus be in the eye of the beholder. "We want particularly our children to understand that they can experience God out of their own experience," Rev. Christine Wiley, pastor of Washington's Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ, said to The Washington Post. "So they shouldn't have to see God as the 'other.' They don't have to see God as a long-haired, blued-eyed person."

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