As Durham School finishes the year and we grow ever-closer towards Christmas, it becomes time to remember the birth of Christ and the festive Nativity. While not as common in the Senior Site, it is not unusual for the Pre-Prep years at Bow at Choristers to dress up as Joseph, Mary, and the Angels. In Bow School during the 1940s and 1950s there were often three plays performed at the end of term's Christmas Entertainment, with these typically including a Nativity Play, a Pantomime, and something more serious. The 1959 Christmas festivities, for example, saw the children perform a Nativity play, extracts from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and a pantomime production of Jack and the Beanstalk written and produced by Mrs Adamson. In 1948, the Nativity performance was performed by the younger years; according to The Bow Record, "their performance was effective and moving and the boys spoke their lines clearly and reverently. Form VB acted as a choir and sang well known carols during the performance. Miss Helen Zadnic played the part of the Virgin and sang very beautifully a carol specially composed by Mr. Cedric Evans. Our grateful thanks are due to Mrs. Craven who so skilfully dressed the play, and also to Mr. Johnson who provided the shepherds' crooks." The senior play, meanwhile, "followed the traditional lines of a pantomime but was enlivened with topicalities which gave it a contemporary flavour".

The Christmas entertainment of 1949 took place after the Nine Lessons and Carols, with the event beginning with a production of Rumpelstiltskin. The Nativity play was entitled 'The Three Roses', and was produced by Mr A. Craven. According to that year's Bow Record, "the acting was very good and reverent, and special mention must be made of B. Driver who played the part of the little girl most beautifully. The part of the Virgin Mary was played by Miss Joan Curtis. The play ended traditionally with the Shepherds and the Wise Men worshipping around the Crib, and in addition, three unfortunate people whom the little girl had persuaded to go to Bethlehem and to whom she had given her own gift of three Christmas Roses. As they all present their gifts to the Christ Child, the little girl kneels in the doorway and sings, 'Gentle Jesus, meek and mild'." 

1958, meanwhile, saw the Christmas Concert take place at St. Oswald's Hall. There were three productions in total: the Nativity Play, One Night in Bethlehem, was performed by Classes Iva and IVb, alongside Choir boys from Vb; A performance of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol was produced by Miss Millie Lodge and performed by VIa and VIb; and the school pantomime, a play entitled The Babes in the Wood was written and produced by Mrs Adamson, performed by Class Va. In 1960 the Christmas Concert was cancelled due to an outbreak of jaundice, but nevertheless the plays were produced in the 1961 Easter term—this time forgoing the nativity in favour of In Days of Chivalry and the Pantomime version of Robinson Crusoe. 

There have been a number of other Nativities practised in Durham School's long history. The above picture shows the 2009 Bow School cohort enjoying a nativity service in the Chapel. December 2002 saw the Choristers perform a Nativity production of The Bossy King in the Cathedral's Chapter House. Far older than any of these, however, was the poetry of Christopher Smart (1722-1771), who published a volume entitled Hymns and Spiritual Songs for the Fasts and Festivals of the Church of England in 1765. This was composed between June 1762 and January 1763 when Smart was confined in St. Luke's Asylum in London. Each of the poems in this book corresponds to a specific date on the church calendar, and so would have been written to reflect the slow passage of time inside the mental hospital. Hymn 32 would presumably have been written on Christmas Day 1762, and depicts the recognisable events of the Christian nativity: 

Where is this stupendous stranger, 

Swains of Solyma, advise, 

Lead me to my Master's manger, 

Shew me where my saviour lies?

O Most Mighty! O MOST HOLY! 

Far beyond the seraph's thought,

Art thou then so mean and lowly 

As unheeded prophets taught? 

O the magnitude of meekness! 

Worth from worth immortal sprung;

O the strength of infant weakness, 

If eternal is so young! 

If so young and thus eternal, 

Michael tune the shepherd's reed, 

Where the scenes are ever vernal, 

And the loves be love indeed! 

See the God blasphem'd and doubted 

In the schools of Greece and Rome, 

See the pow'rs of darkness routed, 

Taken at their utmost gloom. 

Nature's decorations glisten 

Far above their usual trim; 

Birds on box and laurels listen, 

As so near the cherubs hymn. 

Boreas now no longer winters 

On the desolated coast; 

Oaks no more are riv'n in splinters

By the whirlwind and his host. 

Spinks and ouzles sing sublimely

'We too have a Saviour born'; 

Whiter blossoms burst untimely

On the blest Mosaic thorn. 

God all-bounteous, all-creative,

Whom no ills from good dissuade, 

Is incarnate, and a native 

Of the very world he made."