Our outside Nativity
The creation of the Holy Family and their resting place in the week before Christmas felt a lot like T S Eliot’s ‘Journey of the Magi’. It was a hard birth. It took 5 helpers working on and off over 3 days (from Thursday to Saturday) to create it. It rained, the wind was strong, and it was cold. Jeremy’s gazebo kept threatening to blow away, a guy rope snapped and at one point the gazebo actually lifted!
On Friday Monther came to do his job at HPC and when he saw the tent he told us he had lived in a tent like this for two years in Jordan and proceeded to suggest ways we could make it more secure. Esther and her friend David persuaded some nearby builders to give us some solid concrete blocks (the stones from the graveyard which we had been using had not been very effective at keeping the tent sides down) – these with some sand bags left by the electricians did the trick of holding down the gazebo. Esther and I made figures for Mary and Joseph. All seemed to be going well on Friday evening. Monther said he would come back on Saturday to help some more. We didn’t think we would need him but we did! On Friday night we think foxes knocked over Mary and Joseph (possibly attracted by some food in the gazebo). The papier mache heads that Maureen Smith had made had fallen off and were crushed.
Monther was really needed on Saturday. Monther and Jane (Hinde) decided Joseph should kneel rather than stand so he would be more stable. They remade Mary and Joseph. Then Monther was adament that the old blankets I had in the corner should go on the sides to provide insulation from the cold (although I had to persuade him not to cover up Esther’s angel behind the Holy Family). Jane produced black tights for the faces so we had a black holy family that we were all very happy with. Then we had to make baby Jesus. Jane made the body and we found some swaddling cloth (we were very grateful to the Hampstead Players wardrobe). Monther took it from me and said he would show us how he wrapped his baby. So what we have is a genuinely wrapped Middle Eastern baby! Monther’s time, his commitment and sharing his personal experience was his gift to us.
The gazebo and the Holy Family may not survive till Epiphany with all the rain predicted but creating ‘it was (you may say) satisfactory’.