Our outdoor manger scene is an integral part of our family Christmas celebration. JoAnne and I originally made it while pastoring at our first church in Bentley Creek PA. Our church was having a live nativity that year. The animals were staying in the little shed/stable we had constructed on the lawn in front of the church and parsonage for a couple days as there were two live performances separated by a few days. I was the caretaker. JoAnne and I thought it would be a shame to have the animals there with no representation of the Christmas story, the reason for the celebration. So we made the manger scene to place in the stable with the animals when the actors were not present. One corner of one of the figures still shows the marks where I set it a little too close to the donkey and he reached around and chewed on it.
JoAnne found the figures she used for models in a coloring book we had purchased for Keely. She used projection to transfer the forms to the 4 by 8 exterior plywood sheets that I had purchased. Then I cut them out with a jigsaw and we painted them. I then devised a simple stand system that holds them upright securely but can be dismantled easily with a screwdriver, hopefully an electric one. The current manger is not the original one.
Since then, every year that they were not being used for their original purpose, we have put them up in our front lawn for our Christmas display. In Kirkville, we almost never actually put the baby in the manger as there was so often much snow you wouldn’t have been able to tell if the baby was under it all anyway. Now they are with us at our third parish and still helping us to spread the news of Jesus’ coming; God’s greatest gift to us all.
