This nativity set, from my recollection of family lore, was purchased by my Aunt Gael, for my grandma Elaine, some time in the early 1960’s.
Year after year as a child, helping set it up, and then being responsible for setting it up, was a favorite holiday task. At some point, my brother Joe or I broke at least one shepherd… he’s been glued back together.

All the years that we lived on Ellicott Place, it was displayed on the credenza in the dining room… I would find blue paper, I would put small boxes under to create hills; I recall buying rolls of “snow”, using tulle for hills….

One year, I posed my 3-year old daughter Arlie in a white nightgown, a stuffed baby Mickey Mouse held behind her back, took a black and white photo, cut it out, posed that cut out in the scene and took a photo of the entire scene for a our Christmas card! WAY pre-Photoshop!

Over the last few years, the nativity has moved …first to our apartment on Sharon Ave, then to Virginia…lately, I seems that trees have enveloped them in a forest as I have begun collecting white and softly colored trees.

“In the middle of a forest, there’s a clearing by a stream where a mother hold her newborn and that child begins to dream”….

The Prince of Peace, Trans Siberian Orchestra…