6 Nativities

Going back to my first Oregon parish, in the small town of John Day, just before Christmas of 2004, I invited some of the children to watch me create a little presepio, a nativity scene with the cave of Bethlehem, made of brown paper dipped in flour with water. They were mesmerized seeing it being built, forming a paper-mache scene of Bethlehem. Thereupon I asked them to bring along a small rectangular board, and possibly some brown paper bags so that I can help them build one for themselves. Of course they brought along the figurines of the nativity, so that I could build their project to scale. And within a few hours I made 6 of these presepios, with a few more a few days later, ending up with around 17 nativities. They were very well received by their parents, and I wonder how many of them kept up the custom of building a presepio every year for Christmas.