Nativity Scene Printable

How to make the nativity

1. Print at 100%. Choose “Actual size” in the print dialog, then check the 50 mm bar at the foot of the sheet with a ruler. Card of 160 to 220 g/m² (60 to 80 lb cover) stands best; plain copy paper works for the two smaller sizes.
2. Colour first, if you chose colour-in. Crayons and coloured pencils are fine; felt pens can bleed through thin paper, so test one on the floor panel first.
3. Cut round the solid line. Each figure, its floor and its back are one piece, so you cut one outline per figure. Adults may want to do the star and the shepherd’s crook for small children; they have the tightest corners.
4. Fold the two dashed lines so the printed sides stay outside: the figure folds up at its feet, the upside-down back folds up at the other end of the floor. The little ticks outside the outline show where the folds are once the sheet is cut.
5. Glue the tops together. Rub glue stick on the blank side of the back panel’s top (the small “glue” mark shows the spot from the printed side) and press it to the blank side of the figure’s head. That makes a small tent. The floor keeps it from tipping, so nothing needs weighing down.

Questions

Is this nativity scene printable really free?

Yes. There is no sign-up, no watermark and no paid version. The page draws the figures and builds the PDF on your own device, so you can print as many copies as you need for a family, a Sunday school or a whole year group.

Which characters are in the set?

Fifteen: the stable, the manger with the baby, Mary, Joseph, an angel, the star on its post, a shepherd with a crook, a shepherd boy carrying a lamb, a sheep, an ox, a donkey, the three kings (one with gold, one with frankincense, one with myrrh) and a camel. They are drawn for this page in a simple, flat style with plain faces, so they suit young children and leave room for colouring.

Can I print the cutouts as a PDF or as colouring pages?

Both. “Download PDF” gives every sheet in one file, A4 or US Letter. Pick Colour-in and the same figures print as black outlines on white, which makes them a set of nativity colouring pages that also stand up when finished. The PNG button saves the sheet you are looking at as a 300 dpi image, handy for a school printer or a worksheet.

How do the figures stand up without falling over?

Each figure prints as a strip: the figure, a floor, and the figure’s back turned upside down. Folded up and glued at the top it becomes a narrow tent whose floor is at least 40% as deep and 40% as wide as the figure is tall (45% deep on every figure here). That is why a tall king on thin paper still stands on a windowsill.

How do the three sizes compare?

The tabletop set is the one for a shelf or the middle of the table. The finger-puppet size cuts a 15 mm hole in the floor of every person, the angel, the camel, the star and the stable, so a child’s fingertip slides up into the hollow tent and the figure can walk and talk; the sheep, ox, donkey and manger are too small for a finger and simply stand. The Advent-wreath size fits between the candles; keep paper well away from the flames and use battery candles if children are helping.

The whole tabletop scene takes 6 sheets, the finger-puppet size 4 and the Advent-wreath size 2.

How does the class set work?

Choose “Class set from names” and type one name per line. Every name gets exactly one figure with the name printed on its back, in a fixed order: Mary, Joseph, the manger, the angel, the shepherds, the kings, the animals, the star and the stable. With 22 children, the last seven get a second angel, two more shepherds, two more kings and two sheep, so everyone has a figure and the class builds one scene together. Names stay on this device.

How does the nativity Advent calendar work?

Choose Advent calendar (24 days) under “What to print”. You get the Christmas story from Luke 1–2 and Matthew 1–2 in 24 short parts, one for each day from 1 to 24 December, and 24 stand-up pieces: the 15 figures above plus nine pieces of scenery drawn for the calendar (a palm tree for Nazareth, a well, the emperor’s scroll, a travel bundle, the town of Bethlehem, the inn, a hay bale, the shepherds’ fire and a lantern). Day 1 is the stable, so the scene has a home from the start; Mary and Joseph set out in the first week, the shepherds and their sheep come in the third, the camel, the star and the three kings arrive on days 19 to 23, and the manger with the baby is saved for day 24, Christmas Eve. Each day’s piece has “Day 7” or the like printed on its back, so a child can find it in the pile.

Print the story as 24 cards (12 to a sheet, about 6.5 × 6.7 cm on A4, to cut apart and hang, pin to a board or open one a day from an envelope) or as a booklet of a cover and six pages with four days each, in bigger type for reading aloud. The words come retold for children, three or four sentences a day written for this page, or as the King James Version verses each part retells, with the reference; the King James text is from 1611 and in the public domain. Pick a year and every card shows its weekday, worked out for that December; the four Sundays of Advent are marked when they fall on 1 to 24 December (in 2026 the first is on 29 November, so the cards mark the second, third and fourth). The calendar keeps to what the two Gospels tell; where they are silent it says so, for example that the Bible names three gifts but not how many wise men came, or that the donkey is from pictures, not from the text. The shepherds and the wise men visit after the birth in the Bible; here they set out a few days earlier so that everyone is standing round the manger on Christmas Eve.

How do I make the nativity silhouette for a window or the yard?

Pick Silhouette under Style. It is one scene drawn for this page as solid shapes standing on a shared ground strip, so it cuts as a single piece with no loose bits: the stable, the star joined to the roof by its beam of light, Mary kneeling, the manger with the baby, Joseph with his staff, a shepherd with a crook and a sheep. Tick the kings and three camels with their riders walk in from the right, which makes the scene about twice as wide. Type the width you want; the height follows (without the kings the scene is about 0.88 times as tall as it is wide, with them about 0.45).

For a window, type the width of the pane, 15 to 150 cm, less a few centimetres of margin. A scene up to about 19 cm wide (26 cm with the kings on Letter, 28 cm on A4) prints on one sheet; a bigger one is tiled the same way as the yard version. Tape the print onto black card, cut through both layers with a craft knife, and stick the card to the inside of the glass: after dark it reads as a black silhouette against the lit room. The tool tells you how thin the shepherd’s crook comes out: about 5 mm on a 50 cm scene, half that with the kings, because the same width then holds twice as much. Under about 2 mm it is fiddly to cut, so choose a wider scene. With the glowing star, the star becomes a star-shaped opening in a black disc; glue vellum or tracing paper behind it and it glows when the room is lit.

For the yard, type 90 to 240 cm. The scene prints at that exact width over A4 or Letter sheets that overlap by 12 mm, each with red round join marks and a number, plus a layout map on the first sheet. Tape the tiles together, trace the outline onto exterior plywood with carbon paper (or prick it every centimetre with an awl), cut it with a jigsaw and paint it matt black. With the kings, even the 240 cm scene is about 108 cm tall and fits one 2440 × 1220 mm (8 × 4 ft) sheet; without them, scenes over about 135 cm wide need two sheets joined at the back. It is a decoration, not a structure: nothing here is rated for a load, and a board this big catches the wind, so stake it at both ends.

Cut files: the SVG and DXF buttons save the same outline at true size in millimetres, for a laser, a CNC router, a Cricut or Silhouette Studio’s free edition (which opens DXF but not SVG).

Where does the custom come from?

Setting out the figures of the Christmas story is an old custom: the first recorded nativity scene was the one Francis of Assisi staged with a live ox and donkey in the Italian town of Greccio in 1223. Painted and carved cribs followed across Europe, and from the 1800s printers in Central Europe sold sheets of paper figures to cut out and stand up, a cheap crib any household could make. Many families still add the figures bit by bit: the baby on Christmas Eve, and the three kings moving a little closer each day until they arrive on 6 January.