A few people know that I collect miniature nativities as my souvenirs when I traveled. However, few know that my most cherished Christmas decor is a larger old nativity set of Holy Bible type figures made in the late 1970's and passed down from family members. When I think of Christmas, it is not just green and red decorations, but also nativity scenes. I even have a nativity-based Advent calendar ,instead of the candy or mini-gift kind.
The story of my cherished nativity starts with my brother, who passed away years ago in a salt truck accident on an icy bridge. When we were very teenagers, my brother was in a work study program our last year in high school and remained at the company (Home Interiors/HomeCo) when he graduated. One year he used his employee discount to buy my grandma a painted porcelain nativity set. For many Christmas holidays Grandma's set was put together on top of her old gas heater or her music organ. That is until she had someone else put it away for her... When my mom and aunts were going through Grandma's many things after her death, the nativity was found in the original Styrofoam holder put inside a Tony Lamas cowboy boot box in her storage house. The only hand-writing on the box lid read "fabric for doll clothes" not "nativity." Everyone insisted Mom take it to keep or give to me. Mom asked me if I wanted it, since she already had a big ceramic nativity that my brother had given her a few years before he died that she usually set-up next to her fireplace. (Side note, I found Mom's nativity when we were clearing her house in a closet. Somehow, it had been badly stored without being wrapped or put in a box so most of the figures were broken and it did not survive to be passed along.)
I was excited to take this nativity and make it part of my Christmas decor. Since then the nativity moves around each year: from the coffee table, to bay window, under a very large Christmas tree, or to the hearth of the fireplace. It was even put up the year I was injured at Christmas so my husband had to get it down for me and put it out. Years earlier when it was on the hearth, I decided the nativity needed a wooden creche and told my husband this. He said I would never find one tall enough. I then informed that I had just seen two options at Walmart during my shopping trip that morning and I just needed to measure which would be best so I could get one of them at an after-Christmas sale. The next week while I was working, my husband and son went to Walmart and picked a creche out. They then set the creche up with the nativity set as I already had it out and waited for me to notice their little trick. It was not until around bedtime that I even noticed it. I had wondered why my small son was following me around grinning most of the evening - he was waiting for my surprise!
This year, I am experimenting with this family nativity as our Christmas tree by using a short ladder decorated in lights and greenery garland as the tree/creche over the large figures. Then the wrapped gifts on either side can be a reminder that the best Christmas presents are actually Christ's presence. Our eternal lives bought and paid for by Christ's sacrifice, not by anything we can do on this earth. Christ is the reason for the season, so it is important that we remember to keep Him in our Christmas celebrations.
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