Christmas: Nativities

So this Christmas my sister Kaitlyn gave my other sister an adorable Christmas Nativity advent calendar. She made it herself. Isn't it adorable?

Anyway, it made me start thinking about (and taking pictures of) nativities. My mom likes to collect nativities, and she has quite a variety.

My mother's sister once made her an adorable nativity featuring our family acting out the scene (with dogs and two children borrowed from her family). The scene she caught was one of my youngest sister climbing into the manger with my little brother while everyone reacted in ways that expressed quite well their personalities.

My mother is struggling from her kneeling position to do something about it.
My father, having just closed the Bible, is completely oblivious.


The one with the blue nails is me: "I wish I could help, but it would mess up my nails!"
My sister is rushing in to stop it.
My brother is just holding his head in despair.

My other two sisters sit on and watch with bemused expressions, while my two cousins peek out from under the cow.

Then, we have the classic nativities. First, the olive wood, carved, of course, by my good friend Omar in Jerusalem.

You can tell that he lives in the Middle East because he carved 3 camels for the three wise men, instead of the one "representative" camel that is in most nativities. He knows that three men can't share one camel!

Then you have the cutsey nativities.

And, the faceless nativities.

And then you have what I affectionately call "European Middle-Eastern," meaning European artists who did their best to make the nativities look Middle Eastern, but their features still look like they could fit right in in the hills of Germany.

This last picture is my favorite of all the nativities. Can you imagine riding a camel like this for weeks or months?