The Child Jesus is a religious symbol based on the activities of Jesus as an infant up to the age of twelve that recurs throughout history starting from around the 3rd & 4th century with religious figurines and icons of the infant Jesus, usually with His mother, the Virgin Mary, and His father Joseph.

This "original nuclear family" symbolized the Holy Trinity to many early Christian believers and solidified the family unit with such deep spiritual significance that it eventually became an integral part of the Catholic religious dogma, which has a tenet belief in the Holy Family.

The Scriptures and other apocryphal works were passed down either by word of mouth and through song, and much later in works of art that did much to instruct the believer. The symbolism of the Child Jesus in art reached its apex during the Renaissance where the holy family were a central theme in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci and many other masters.

From the 4th century

The majority of these stories were derived from “forbidden” or unapproved apocryphal books, and as the majority of Christians at the time were illiterate, the stories acquired a dark or morbid feel similar to the Brothers Grimm tales, as concern for approval from the Roman Curia began to wane in the later centuries.

A common theme of the medieval stories attribute Jesus as a fearless and carefree child who innocently gets into mischief that inexorably led to his playmates' demise. The most common story is the cloud story. The child Jesus, wanting to play in the clouds, crawled into the sky on a sunbeam, but all of the playmates who followed him soon lost their faith and fell to their deaths.

Another story reveals the tale of a child (sometimes referred to as the "Judas Child" - as though Jesus and the disciples had run-ins with each other throughout their lives), dammed the channel that supplied water to pools which the Child Jesus bathed in

These events naturally made other parents panic and forbid their children to play with him, so when the child Jesus arrived in the town plaza to play the parents quickly hid their children in a large kiln-oven for shelter. The child Jesus, naturally well aware of this, inquired about his playmates' whereabouts and was told all the children had left. When he asked what the noise coming from the large oven was he was told that pigs were being cooked. Jesus left and when the parents opened the oven doors, they found (according to which version of the story one heard) either uncooked squealing piglets or roasted chops.

The stories created about the activities of the child Jesus were not all gruesome, and detail that even as a baby or child Jesus set out to do the Divine Will of his Father. Other stories chronicle how even as an infant his smile could make the rain or storms end and the sun shine, or could heal the sick. Another story tells of how a baby that was dying was placed in a tub of his bathwater and was brought back to life, and that any child in his presence would not cry or fret.

Although the importance of the religious symbolism of the Child Jesus waned after the Middle Ages, it has survived to some degree in the Philippines. During the Spanish Conquest of the Philippines, when the Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan landed in Cebu on April 7, 1521, the island's rulers King Humabon and Queen Juana were converted to Christianity along with four hundred of their subjects a few weeks after Magellan's arrival.

Magellan planted a large wooden cross and gave Queen Juana a wooden doll of the Santo Niño (the Holy Child) to commemorate the event. While the original doll and cross are still on public display in Cebu, the symbolism of the Child Jesus and reproductions of the original can be seen throughout the Philippine archipelago as the venerated Santo Niño de Cebu, in either the Child-King pose wearing a gold crown, holding a sceptre, and draped in a flowing gilded red cape, or as a representation of the common man wearing black pajama pants and a straw hat, symbolizing that all men are children and that Salvation is obtainable if one approaches it like a child does.

The term "Child Jesus" often refers to the Infant Jesus of Prague.

See also

• Infant Jesus of Prague
• Madonna and Child
• Holy Prepuce
• Holy Umbilical Cord
• Infancy Gospels
• Santo Niño

References

il Bambino Gesù