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Game night with friends is something that doesn’t happen as often as I wish. After a fun one some years back, a friend appeared at my door, bringing me a gift. We had played the game, “What’s yours like?”, where everyone gives clues to try to get a person to guess what item is being described. The clues I used were: ripped, leaky, mildewed; leading the person to the answer word, shower curtain. Hence, the friend with the new shower curtain in hand. Massage Shower Set

If we were playing the game and describing a word used often at Christmas, I could describe my main one as: matte, white, exquisite, fragile, extensive, packaged carefully, wrapped in cotton, tissue, and wool. To help guessers who are not in my family, I would need to add: hand-made by my mother using Lladro molds in porcelain class, on display long after other Christmas decorations are packed away for the year, decorated with white lights and faux evergreen, complete with camels for each of the three kings and a cow with horns so delicate I suck my breath in each time I unwrap them. I’m sure you have deduced that I am describing a Nativity scene. Along with the treasure my mother made, I have a tiny creche which is just a stable with miniatures of Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus. It is part of my Christmas village and is usually placed next to my flagpole in the churchyard. One of my Nativity scenes is a wall plaque, another a tree ornament. Some are intricate and elegant, others are coarse, and crude made from clay, wood, or resin. My favorite Nativity scene isn’t mine. It belongs to my sister. In complete contrast to my divine porcelain pieces created by my mother, my sister has my parent’s original creche. The little clay figurines were purchased one by one from the dime store and brightly painted by my mother and father when they were newly married seventy years ago. The stable is formed of cardboard complete with a floor, a painted inside wall, and straw embedded in the roof. The angel is Pepto-Bismol pink, and the cow is an odd shade of purple. That set is the one that, with wide-eyed, innocent, child-like faith, we reverently arranged each year, with one of us making sure the kings were placed so they were arriving from the east. It is the set that shows we had parents who shared their faith with us from our very beginnings.

Our beginnings were in local hospitals, not in a stable. We each used the same antique miniature crib instead of a manger. Rather than being visited by shepherds and kings, God sent aunts and uncles to visit and love on us.

How historically accurate any of my variety of Nativity scenes may or may not be is up for discussion. Were Mary and Joseph in what we in mid-western America picture a stable to be? Or was it the lower level of a home where some animals slept? It’s unlikely that the manger is what we picture as a cot-like structure filled with hay. In Bethlehem, a manger was probably made from limestone, used as a trough for water rather than feed. Whatever the particulars were surrounding the birth of Jesus, I believe it was more humble, like my sister’s scene rather than elegant like mine. I believe if Mary could give birth and entertain strangers, including kings, in such surroundings, then my Christmas guests won’t mind if my abode isn’t perfectly decked out when I entertain.

Miriam-Webster describes nativity as: the process or circumstances of being born and creche as: a representation of the Nativity scene. You’ve heard about mine. What’s yours like?

Anne VandeMoortel, a regular columnist, is a Moline school nurse, blogger, grandmother of five, Prader-Willi mother, serial hobbyist, and collector of people and their stories.

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