Nativity plays have been an important feature of school life for many years, as these pictures from the Oxford Mail archives show.

Picture One shows a scene from Journey to Bethlehem at St Christopher’s First School at Cowley, Oxford, in 1977.

The angels are seen scaring the shepherds, Simon Woodward, Gordon Hitchcox, Ricky Long and Robert Pinkney.

Standlake Primary School performed three Christmas plays in 1986, including The Shepherd Boy and the Dove.

Thomas Odling and Oliver Coster, both five, seen in Picture Two, played the shepherds.

Sixty children aged three and four at Kidlington Nursery School delighted their parents with two performances of their Nativity play in the Baptist Church in 1974. Picture Three shows the young cast in rehearsal.

In Picture 4, Mary and Joseph are shown the way to the inn in a scene at Overmead School, Blackbird Leys, Oxford, in 1965.

The Three Wise Men arrived with tinsel everywhere at Caldecott Infants’ School at Abingdon.

Paul Parsons, six, Adrian Joyce, seven, and David Iley, seven, are seen performing their parts in an undated Picture Five.

Picture Six shows the Archangel Gabriel leading children at Headington Quarry CoE School into the last carol at the end of their Nativity play in 1964.