Nativity, Luke 2:11 Christmas Wall Art

The scene in the stable

The baby lies asleep in white swaddling on a bed of straw in a rough wooden manger. Mary kneels on the left in a blue mantle and a pale veil, her eyes lowered and one hand resting on the child. Joseph kneels across from her in cream with a rust-red cloak, curly-haired and bearded, both hands on the edge of the crib and his head bent close.

Behind Mary a gray donkey pokes its head between wooden posts; behind Joseph a brown ox with short horns looks on. A small iron lantern glows in the straw at the lower left. Above it all, in warm brown script: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”

Who heard Luke 2:11 first?

Not Mary and Joseph. In Luke's Gospel these words are spoken by an angel to shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night in the fields near Bethlehem. Shepherds were ordinary working men, often considered rough and unreliable, and they were the first people told of the birth.

Every phrase in the verse carries weight. “This day” makes it an event in time, not a legend. “The city of David” is Bethlehem, where David was born and anointed, and where Joseph had come to be registered because he belonged to David's line. “Saviour”, “Christ” and “Lord” are three titles stacked together: rescuer, anointed king, and a word the Greek Old Testament used for God himself.

The ox and the donkey do not appear in Luke. They entered Christmas art very early through Isaiah 1:3, which says the ox knows its owner and the ass its master's crib, and they have stood by the manger in paintings and nativity sets ever since.

At Christmas and in the nursery

This is a print to bring out every December, above the mantel or near the tree. Catholic families often keep it up through the whole Christmas season until the Baptism of the Lord in January.

With the newborn at its center, it also makes a tender gift for a baby born near Christmas, or for a child's birthday, framed for a nursery where the story can be told again each year.