According to Bach’s own handwriting in the inside cover of the autograph score, the performances were divided up between the two town churches of St Thomas and St Nicholas as follows:

It was only at St Nicholas, therefore, that the entire work was heard. Although it was never performed as a single entity in Bach’s time, there are several indications that Bach may have conceived the piece as such. The Evangelist’s narration, taken from Luke 2:1 - 21 and Matthew 2:1 -12, weaves together all six cantatas chronologically, from the decree from Cæsar Augustus demanding registration for taxation in the first cantata, to the visit of the Magi in the sixth. Bach begins and ends the work in D major (returning to that key in Part 3 as well), implying large-scale form with the use of recurring tonality as exists in the passion settings. Finally, as Bach’s nineteenth-century biographer Philipp Spitta asserts, “to think of the Christmas Oratorio as six independent cantatas conflicts with the way in which the church thought of the Christmas season. Irrespective of the fact that the six parts of the Christmas Oratorio deal with a progressive sequence of events, they must be held, according to church doctrine, to constitute a whole, falling, as they do, closely within one short Christian season.”

The six cantatas which form the Christmas Oratorio follow the standard form which had come to be Bach’s default approach to cantata writing; namely a balance of straight biblical quotation, from passages appropriate to the season of the Christian calendar, followed by poetic biblical exegesis and hymns. Performed between the gospel and the sermon they formed the musical and spiritual spine of Sunday morning worship.

As mentioned earlier, the work is a parody, in that it recycles compositions which Bach had already written. In the case of parts 1 – 4, this consists of two secular cantatas, BWV 213 and 214, on which Bach drew heavily. The first of these, originally entitled Laßt uns sorgen, laßt uns wachen (which loosely translates as Let us provide, let us take care), was written for Dresden royalty, specifically the birthday of the eleven-year-old son of the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich Christian. Its only performance was on September 5^th 1733. The second, Tönet ihr Pauken! Erschallet! Trompeten! (Literally Sound ye drums! Ring out! Trumpets!), was written for the birthday of Maria Josepha (December 8^th), Queen of Poland, and performed on that day in 1733 during her state visit to Leipzig. Music for parts 5 and 6 are believed to have been plundered from a third secular cantata (Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen, written in October 1734 for the election of August III as King of Poland, and also from the St Mark Passion (Leipzig, 1731), and another sacred cantata (BWV 248a, Leipzig, 1734), all of which are now lost.

The secular cantatas, known also as dramma per musica, were a similar but separate breed from the sacred Sunday cantatas. They were, in effect, mini operas. The controlling city fathers had closed Leipzig opera house in 1720, somewhat piously believing its type of secular entertainment to be unsuitable and a bad influence on the Godliness of its citizens. There was, however, a healthy appetite amongst the people for these slightly illicit musical dramas. They were written largely for state occasions such as the swearing in of a new city council, the state visit of a foreign dignitary, or the birthday of a prominent member of the aristocracy. The German-born Harvard professor Christoph Wolff, in his highly regarded book on Bach, states that “Bach’s [secular] cantatas were by no means makeshift substitutes for operas. These compositions demonstrate at every step a full mastery of the dramatic genre and skilful pacing of the various plots.” BWV 213 is the story of Hercules at the Crossroads, a well-known tale, depicted in several paintings contemporary to Bach, in which Hercules meets two maidens, respectively representing virtue and vice, at a crossroads and has to choose which one to follow. One way leads to eventual glory through hardship, the other to ignominy - but with a lot of fun along the way!  The story was doubtless chosen to appeal to the small boy whilst also offering him a moral from which to learn. BWV 214 tells the fictional story of a queen who is blessed and attended by the goddesses Bellona, Pallas, Irene and Fama – doubtless a subservient gesture from Bach, a municipal employee, towards Queen Maria Josepha, the royal guest of the municipal employer. 

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