Christmas 2011

A full house today! Including Mr. Poon from downstairs (see the October 2009 post "from Noah to Abraham") who came for the whole morning, a first! He was chosen by popular demand to be our Joseph. Okay, it’s very possible that Joseph was quite a bit older than Mary! (Maybe not THIS much older though!) So we introduced Joseph and his fiancée Mary. Then a friend comes to Joseph and whispers, “Hey, did you know that your fiancée is already pregnant?” Mr. Poon, who had never heard the whole Christmas story before, had a huge reaction. “What am I supposed to say to that??!” But then of course an angel comes to him and tells him not to be ashamed to marry Mary, because the child was conceived of the Holy Spirit and would be the Savior of the world. So they have the wedding.

Then, when Mary is big with child (pillow under the dress), they have to go to Bethlehem to register for the census. They walk there but can’t get a room at the inn (folded table with “full” sign), so they have to go to the stable(folded table with picture of ox & ass in stall). The baby is born (out with the pillow, turn around with baby doll in arms), and to avoid putting the baby on the dirty floor, they put it to sleep in the manger. At this point Mary, a bit embarrassed by the proceedings, holds the doll by one leg and dumps him from about waist height into the grass-filled box on the floor. Poor baby Jesus! We all sing “Away in a Manger.”

Next there are some shepherds in towel headdresses keeping watch over their picture of a flock of sheep. Angels appear to them and tell them the good news of the birth of the Savior (here we were supposed to sing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, but the leader missed it). The shepherds decide they better go see for themselves. We sing “O Come All Ye Faithful.” They find the stable and kneel down to worship the baby (or at least the two shepherds that are capable of kneeling do so). We all sing “Joy to the World.”

12-year-old Melissa Chu led the game, and she did a wonderful job of explaining how it was ironic that the child born King of the Universe would be born in a stable, when he should have had the red carpet rolled out to welcome Him. That we would walk the red carpet in his honor. Of course just walking down a red carpet hardly qualifies as a game, so we made it more fun by making a hoop out of the “carpet” & each person had to keep moving the hoop along in order to keep walking on the carpet. Originally I thought I could do it with just red fabric, but I found it was not real practical. I ended up pasting it along a long stretch of cardboard pieces—had to stretch the material to make it long enough for a decent hoop & kept praying that the glue wouldn’t come loose under the pressure. Duh, I could have just done this with red cardboard and saved myself a lot of hassle. But the shiny red velveteen certainly was prettier.

We had a visiting American friend who couldn’t understand the Chinese explanation & no one translated for her. She wondered WHAT was going on when, after watching the Christmas story, suddenly everyone was taking turns walking in this big hamster wheel…

Craft time was simple; everyone was given various figures to make up a crèche scene which they were to glue on to a large sheet of paper to match the example. (At least it would have been simple if I hadn’t misplaced half the glue sticks…)!