Nativity Service Ideas: 5 Christmas Pageant Tips
The holidays are right around the corner, and Nativity services are a great way to involve children in your Christmas program. Discover five essential tips for planning your church's Nativity play! Get Christmas skit ideas and creative pageant tips for children's ministry success.
Tip 1: Choose a Theme for Your Nativity Service
Your church can emphasize many themes with its Nativity service! After choosing a theme, writing a script and planning out the order of events will be much easier because a theme brings more substance and life to your skit.
Here are four ideas you can do:
1. Traditional Nativity
You can have a traditional Nativity scene with your actors dressed in 1st-century BC garb. One fun idea to spice things up this Christmas is to use live animals on the set, create a barn feel to your sanctuary using haybales and barn tools, and help the audience really feel like they are in the little town of Bethlehem snuggled in a barn with the animals.
2. Light of the World
Another excellent approach is to make the theme all about the light of Jesus! String up holiday lights, create a shining star over the stage, and center your script around Jesus being the light of the world.
3. Candy Cane Legend
You may want to make your pageant more whimsical. A candy-cane motif can make your pageant really stand out. This Nativity skit can focus on the shepherd crook, relating it to the legend of the candy cane and what it represents. The narrator of the service can be a shepherd who tells the story from his perspective. You can have fun decorating with candy canes and even hand them out at the end of the service.
4. God With Us
A theme focused on the meaning of Emmanuel sends the message loud and clear that now that Jesus has been born, God is with us! Emphasize the visitors who come to meet Jesus, like the wise men and shepherds. Focus your script around their excitement and joy that He is here.
Once you have a theme like this, there are all sorts of directions you can go:
- Create a dance for the shepherd to celebrate what the angels have told them.
- Have the wise men leap off their camels and make a run for it because they can't wait to meet Jesus.
Whatever direction you take, choosing a theme will add so much value to your Nativity. Your Nativity service can become more than simply a reenactment of the events - instead, it can serve as a way to share the Gospel message with your audience.
Tip 2: Simplify Skits for Children's Ministry
Once you've let your imagination run away with you in creating a theme and main message and have begun to see the vision of how your play will go, it's time to make a service that is simple enough for your children's ministry to be a part of. Simplifying a skit includes being sure lines are realistic in length, providing ample time for kids to go on and off stage if there is more than one scene in the play, and providing music, dances, props, etc. They are realistic in length and ability and do not have too many elements that can become too complicated for kids in performance.
For instance, having one microphone on stage for each kid to go up to and talk into instead of portable microphones for each child helps immensely. Also, when there are a lot of children involved, it's great to give each kid one task to spread out the responsibilities and help highlight each child on stage. Some kids might be dancing angels while others have a line or two as Mary or Joseph, and some might be part of a singing chorus. Things will run much smoother when each kid has one task to focus on.
Tip 3: Organize Rehearsals and Volunteers Early
Now is the time to start organizing rehearsals and volunteers! It's never too early to start. But there is such a thing as starting too late. Giving ample time for kids to practice their parts is key to the success of a production. Each time they practice, children will get more and more comfortable with their role. If there are any dances or songs, it helps to share the link so parents can access the music at home so the kids can practice in their spare time and hold rehearsals.
Volunteers are crucial to a Nativity service running smoothly. You will need volunteers to help lead the practices, organize the times/dates, give out clear instructions for parents, and help direct kids where they need to go during the service or provide off-stage childcare. Invite parents to be part of the service by volunteering, share needs in your bulletin/in announcements, and, of course, only accept help from adult volunteers who have their clearances. Invite teens from your youth group to help as well!
The best time to start asking for volunteers is typically by November. This way, you can begin practices in mid-late November and continue into early to mid-December. Last-minute rehearsals are not recommended because families get busy around Christmas. However, one final dress rehearsal close to the performance is ideal so kids can remember their parts before the service.
Tip 4: Get Creative with Costumes and Props on a Budget
Costumes and props are an important part of a Nativity service. They help the audience to connect with the scene! There are excellent ways to get creative with costumes and props and stay on a budget:
- Cloth material has become more expensive in the last few years. An excellent substitute for handmade sewn costumes is using materials like painted cardboard and felt or reusing old sheets or clothing and repurposing them.
- For a shepherd's crook, use an old curtain pole, attach a cardboard-shaped hook, wrap it in brown craft paper, and hot glue it together.
- For a gift from the magi, use a small cardboard box and paint it to look like a chest, or find an old wooden craft jewelry box and repurpose it.
- Pipe cleaners and ribbons make great angel halos, and you can glue white feathers to cardboard to create wings.
- When creating an animal costume (like a sheep), pillow stuffing, or poly-fil, can be used for wool. Or you can use cotton balls.
In most cases, costumes and props can be made by using what you already have or visiting a second-hand store to get some good deals on used items. Another great option is to reach out to neighboring churches who might not be using their old costumes anymore and use those costume materials to create new ones!
Tip 5: Incorporate Music and Audience Participation
Incorporating music into your Nativity service is a great way to ensure everyone enjoys it. Adults and kids alike love singing and hearing Christmas carols in a service. Some excellent ways to provide music in a Nativity service are using a bell choir or voice choir, playing music in the background of the scene, starting the service with a carol singing and then leading into the Christmas play, doing the Nativity in the form of a musical, and more!
Audience participation is also a great way to ensure the success of your service. Engage your audience by
- Including everyone in singing songs
- Handing out objects such as noisemakers and cueing the audience when to create the noise,
- Using a narrator to engage with the audience, encourage participation, and lead the congregation in a scripture reading between scenes.
The more you involve the audience, the less likely there will be a loss of attention to the production.
Remember Your Younger Audience Members!
For younger siblings who can't participate on stage, it's great to have some interaction so they have fun and enjoy the Christmas pageant, too! For example, parents should be informed that audience members will be invited to come up to the stage to take pictures at the end. This is a great way to keep kids in their seats during the service and allow for excellent close-up shots.
Children's Ministry Christmas Skits and More!
We hope these five tips have given you more than enough ideas to start your Nativity service! For more ideas around the holidays, check out these links:
