When I hear of controversies and lawsuits in various places in the United States over the public display of nativity scenes at Christmas time, I’m glad I live in rural Alberta where we’re still free to say Merry Christmas to one another and to portray the real reason for the season! As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, our hand carved olive wood nativity from old Jerusalem is my most treasured Christmas decoration. It’s the first one to come out of storage each year and the last to be put away again.

This year, there’s also a nativity scene on display in front of our church and it’s the reason that a lot of things on my Christmas To Do list haven’t been done yet. For many years it sat in storage too badly weathered to be used; so many years, in fact, that many of us had forgotten that it even existed. Over the past couple of weeks, I spent many peaceful hours in the basement of the church repainting the nine almost life sized figures.

Pieces that looked like this

now look like this

and now I can get on with the rest of my Christmas preparations!