Manger Scene

Lest you may have interpreted my last blog to think that I hate Christmas, let me set you straight. It's not about tacky lawn ornaments or Christmas Specials in the stores. It's about friends, families, traditions, Baby Jesus, and memories. All of these are wrapped up in our ratty old manger scene.

It is made of paper mache, intended to look like Italian Renaissance porcelain. It was passed around in the family for years before we gave it a home. It had seen better days. The figures were ten to twelve inches tall if intact, but they weren't. None of the sheep had four legs, the camel's neck was broken, the cow had no horns, the shepherd had no crook. We made replacement parts out of plastic clay and painted them. The shepherd was happy to have a swizzle stick as a crook. Every year we had more patching to do.

Worst of all was the after-market Baby Jesus, who was way too big for his red plastic strawberry basket manger filled with pink Easter grass. He sort  of lay in there at an angle, and looked like a five-year old Eddie Haskell. One year I found a perfect replacement, the right size, in a believable manger, and he actually looked like a baby. However, you can't just toss the original in the trash, so we have always had two. Jason called them the Babies Jesi.

The original group took up about three feet on the buffet, arranged on a sheet of white cotton batting. We stuck books under it in the back that could have been sand dunes. The kids began adding characters from their toy box, so the display grew every year. Horses and cows seemed to belong, but there were no rules. A tiny train set, Happy Meal characters such as the Little Mermaid showed up. Santa Claus.
Little green army men. Lions, tigers, even a gorilla were welcome. The display got so large that there is no room in our down-sized house. We are hoping one of our kids or grandkids will give it a home.