‘Join the Christmas Story’ Peg Doll Nativity

Jesus came for everyone

The first Peg Doll Nativity in Great Malvern Priory Christmas 2025

In summer 2025 the gift of a Santon Nativity set from Provence got the Priory curate thinking. How could everyone join the Nativity?

No one expected the very first Join the Christmas Story Nativity to be the amazing success that it became, with 5,121 peg dolls added to the Nativity scene.

Following coverage on BBC Hereford and Worcester, we’ve had many enquiries about how we did it. So here's a brief guide to how the Priory’s Peg Doll Nativity, as it came to be known, was put together. Feel free to adapt it to suit your setting.

There are links to the suppliers we used, as a guide, only.

  • To invite everyone to take their place in the Nativity story and to think about it.

  • To invite people to return to church to collect their peg dolls.

The aim

  • Decorate peg dolls and place them in an ever-growing Nativity scene available for all to see.

  • To reunite people with the peg dolls, to remind them of their place in the Nativity, by…

  • Inviting people to return for a brief, 20 minute, family friendly Peg Doll Blessing Service and collect their peg dolls to take home.

  • Enabling those who couldn’t attend the service to pick up their peg dolls, and a Peg Doll Prayer Card, for a month after the service.

The process

The ‘ingredients’

Nativity scene

  • A decorated wooden or cardboard scene.
    A large flat area to put the Nativity figures and for the peg dolls to be added to, with a decorated upright backdrop. For 2026 we have chosen a Malvern backdrop to reiterate that Jesus was born among us. The ‘stable’ will be a bus stop in the town centre.

  • Fairy lights
    Drill holes through the upright backdrop to poke fairy lights through. They’ll illuminate windows and make stars in the sky. We used 1500 Premier Treebrights warm white.

  • Materials to decorate the scene
    We used Dulux emulsion tester pots from our local DIY store.

  • Nativity set
    Made in-house from peg dolls.

  • Wooden peg dolls
    Purchased online and individually numbered - this is critical to enable reuniting.

  • Marker pens to decorate.
    We bought Shuttle Art permanent markers.

  • Blutak to stick them to the Nativity scene. You’ll need lots.

Peg dolls

  • ‘How to’ instructions
    …which are…Choose a peg doll. Decorate it. Note the number on the underside. Take a piece of blutak. Stick your peg doll onto the Nativity scene. Come back for the Peg Doll Blessing Service to take your peg doll home.

  • ‘I’ve Joined the Christmas Story’ cards, to enable people to note the number on the underside of their peg doll(s) if they don’t photograph it.

  • Prayer cards for those who don’t attend the Peg Doll Blessing Service (see links above)

  • Publicity - local media, social media, church publications, Diocesan newsletters…

Other items

  • Take all the peg dolls off the Nativity scene.

  • De-blutack them.

  • Divide them into sections. We divided into 100s.

  • Place them in containers for collection, with the number range in each basket clearly visible.

  • Over-paint those which remain, ready for use the following year. Use a stain block paint for the first layer. Expect to paint several layers. This is both arduous and meditative.

Afterwards

  • Invite the congregation to be involved from the start, creating the scene, preparing the peg dolls - we paint the heads in three skin tone shades.

  • Provide refreshments and have a jolly time of fellowship during the preparation stage.

  • Make the backdrop scene local to you, so people recognise places. God’s Kingdom is here and now. We draw out the scene in pencil, and then number each section, so it’s literally painting by numbers. Little or no skill required by painting volunteers.

  • Have a number of peg dolls, decorated by the congregation, ready to go onto the Nativity scene on ‘launch day’ to give others the idea of how it works.

  • Make small balls of blutack for people to use and stick them in a patch on the Nativity scene, so they’re obvious.

  • Gently wiggle the Nativity each day to identify non-blutacked peg dolls. Blutack them down.

  • If people are decorating peg dolls in church, put a disposable table covering over the decorating table.

  • Provide a disclaimer in case of peg dolls going missing.

  • Let your Peg Doll Nativity develop its own momentum.
    We hadn’t expected peg dolls to appear on the upright section, nor in the manger, nor stacked on top of each other (but these did tend to collapse). We hadn’t expected the Priory Bell Ringers to make an amazing working bell tower.

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