In the year of the Oberammergau Passion Play, with its reminder both of the long tradition of such celebrations and their danger of being subsumed into the ‘heritage industry’, it is instructive to be reminded that the best traditions can also be the most recent, because the freshest and most relevant to the needs to which they respond. Also in Bavaria, and virtually unnoticed by the tourist industry, a nativity celebration is held each Christmas, in a hillside stable to which the participating donkey knows its own way – a ‘living picture’, which began alongside a charitable market and an exhibition of cribs as part of one small community's seasonal celebrations. Its creator, Brother Stephan, talks here about the event to Walter Siegfried.