Nativity.

If I had to choose one favorite activity that symbolizes what I want my family to remember about the Christmas season, it is setting up our nativity scenes for the season. I just love getting out the pieces, looking carefully at each one, and reminding the kids of the role that each person and animal had in the first Christmas night in Bethlehem. The kids really love and look forward to getting the nativities out each year......they beg and beg to get them out! Of course, they always want to know right away where the Baby Jesus is, so it always makes for a teachable moment for redirecting their attention back to where it needs to be this season. There is so much to pull their little minds away from Jesus at Christmas, that I want these scenes to be a constant reminder about what Christmas means for our family. The kids have a Little People nativity set that I bought on Kennedy's first Christmas, and they love enacting Jesus' birth with these fun and colorful little people. When I first discovered this set, I bought a set for several friends and I just think it is an awesome way to bring Jesus' birth alive for little ones. They would love to play with it the whole year through, but I have decided to pack it away and bring it out only in December, to highlight the significance of the event and hopefully raise the anticipation factor. The second set is my cherished nativity that my sister started for me the Christmas after Matt and I were married. It is sort of a rustic, earthy set, and I just love it. It is one of my most cherished Earthly possessions, and I love that it communicates that Jesus' birth was not one typically characteristic of a King; it was simple, Earthy, and really went unnoticed to much of the world. But, oh, how significant that event is to the history of the world and to each and every person to ever live and breathe. We have a third nativity, also, one that is also very precious to me. It is one that a very special couple, the Racignols, gave us for our wedding. It was such a creative gift because for the first couple of years of our marriage, new pieces would randomly appear.....the gift that kept on giving! This year, I am going to wait until Christmas Eve to set this one us as a way to retell the Christmas story. This set has many, many pieces so it is a fun and meaningful way to add the details of the Christmas story. This year, I ordered a new nativity--a hand-carved teak wood set--designed especially for kids to play with. I saw it in a Sensational Beginnings catalog last year and just fell in love with it, so when I saw it again this year, I just had to have it for our family. I see it as an investment in the spiritual growth and development of my children, so the few dollars it cost was well worth helping them to embrace the true and lasting joy of Christmas.