Day 14: Nativity

I first photographed our nativity set last year. We purchased this set a few years ago at a fair trade store in Chattanooga that has, sadly enough, shut it's doors to the public. I liked this nativity set particularly because of it's durability and kid-friendliness. I'm all for a fancy, off-limits nativity scene to be enjoyed from a distance. But I wanted this one to be accessible to Karis and her friends so that they could reenact the story of Jesus' birth. I was excited to walk in this morning and find Karis doing just that. She had lined up all the characters in a circle around baby Jesus. The image struck me as familiar, and I realized she was telling the story according to the pictures in the Jesus Storybook Bible, Jesus encircled by all the other characters.

I was glad to see the nativity set being used in the hands-on way I had hoped it would be. But I also learned that Karis has some of her Biblical facts mixed up. Joseph was banished to a basket all by himself because his eyes were closed (the artist's rendering), and she explained he was being punished for not looking at baby Jesus. She also told me one of the wise men was a leper (!). And, in the end, she said the scene was missing something. She ran off into her room for a few seconds, returned to the table with a new toy, and then continued to role play with the characters--Mary, Joseph, an angel, three wise men, the barn animals, baby Jesus, and one Fisher-Price alligator. That's my little Florida girl.