A Candlelight Nativity (+ printable instructions)

Last year, my internet friend Caitlin posted about a candlelight nativity her family had done on Christmas Eve. I was intrigued. When I asked if I could have a copy of the script, she kindly sent it over…and it was beautiful.

Unsurprisingly, it was almost identical to the nativity script my family has used for years. We always dressed up as Mary + Joseph + the shepherds + so forth, read the Christmas story from the Bible, and sang hymns in between verses. In fact, the first time David met most of my extended family, he wound up playing one of the wise men.

I knew my girls would love acting out the story of Jesus’ birth. However, there aren’t quite enough of us for all the parts, unless we invite some friends over. And we may still do that.

Meanwhile, this candlelight nativity is a great alternative. We still get to see each character represented. We still read the story and sing the songs. Instead of dressing everyone up and direction them through their parts, though, I just have to pull out the candles, matches, and script.

Hooray for simplifying!

Even better, it ties in well with my goal to bring light + life into our home this Christmas season.

If you want to have your own candlelight nativity this year, you can use this free printable script I’ve put together.

It’s a combination of Caitlin’s original script, my family’s, and some of my own words. The narration is almost entirely from the KJV Bible. The songs are (I hope) familiar to you, but if they aren’t, you can find the music here.

The instructions suggest using different colored candles for each character. I chose to use all white ones in different sizes, shapes, and holders instead. To reproduce the candlelight nativity exactly as shown in these photos, you can use these items from IKEA: