Making an inn for our Nativity
I have mentioned it before but here in Spain Nativity scenes reign supreme. Since basically everyone is Catholic whether they are practicing or not they celebrate the coming of the 3 Kings/Wisemen rather than Santa. On January 6th when the Wisemen arrived to meet Jesus is when children get most of their gifts here in Spain.
People put up their Nativity scenes at the beginning of December and Jose and I are no different (though we have a tree too, read about it here). Right now we have what is called here the "misterio" or mystery which includes just Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus (which you put out on Christmas). Other people have huge (and expensive) collections of pieces. They add to them every year. There are all kinds of figures that you can get, a lot of which you know where NOT at the birth of Jesus but are fun all the same. It is a nice tradition to have. One friend told me that as a child her parents would move the Wisemen around the house, changing their position each day, getting closer and closer to the inn as time went on. I love this idea!
Anyway, Jose and I would really like to add a manger to our collection but all of them that we have seen pre-made have cost around 50 euros. That is a lot of money for us right now. Here are some pictures of the ones I have been coveting at the annual Nativity festival. Remember, we are just talking about the structure (not the figures inside it).
People put up their Nativity scenes at the beginning of December and Jose and I are no different (though we have a tree too, read about it here). Right now we have what is called here the "misterio" or mystery which includes just Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus (which you put out on Christmas). Other people have huge (and expensive) collections of pieces. They add to them every year. There are all kinds of figures that you can get, a lot of which you know where NOT at the birth of Jesus but are fun all the same. It is a nice tradition to have. One friend told me that as a child her parents would move the Wisemen around the house, changing their position each day, getting closer and closer to the inn as time went on. I love this idea!
Anyway, Jose and I would really like to add a manger to our collection but all of them that we have seen pre-made have cost around 50 euros. That is a lot of money for us right now. Here are some pictures of the ones I have been coveting at the annual Nativity festival. Remember, we are just talking about the structure (not the figures inside it).
As you can see, they are not that complicated. Most of them are made with wood and cork. As luck would have it, these things were just laying around while we were hiking a while ago. So Jose and I started to collect it. For free. Boom.
We took home the pieces we picked up and treated them with an anti-termite solution. It smelled horrible but we wanted to make sure that we didn´t have any critter surprises during the holidays.
Next we fit together the pieces to make the inn. We nailed it all into place and though it looks crude, that was the point. We will probably have to caulk it before we put it into storage and perhaps add a base to make sure it stays but for now I am happy with the results. Here is a pic from my phone with our figures in place. We ended up only paying about a dollar in nails for the entire project. Merry Christmas to all! We are headed tomorrow to spend the holidays with Jose's big extended family.
We took home the pieces we picked up and treated them with an anti-termite solution. It smelled horrible but we wanted to make sure that we didn´t have any critter surprises during the holidays.
Next we fit together the pieces to make the inn. We nailed it all into place and though it looks crude, that was the point. We will probably have to caulk it before we put it into storage and perhaps add a base to make sure it stays but for now I am happy with the results. Here is a pic from my phone with our figures in place. We ended up only paying about a dollar in nails for the entire project. Merry Christmas to all! We are headed tomorrow to spend the holidays with Jose's big extended family.
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