Kresh Crash

I tell ya, you can't find a decent Nativity scene for under a hundred dollars.

I've been scouring the local retailers with Isabel trying to find a scene that she likes -- to no avail. (Apparently, the overpriced Fontanini sets are out...I don't like how they have some kind of guild monopoly on Christmas.)

But it has given us a lot of fodder for holiday anecdotes. For instance, Isabel finally saw a set that she thought was reasonably untacky at Wal*Mart...There is something surpremely ironic in buying a nativity scene painted by non-Christian Asian slave labor, but what can you do with the economy the way it is?
Anyway, Isabel picks it up and asks me what I think, to which I respond: "It's great if you like your shepherds decapitated."
Yep. There off to the side of the set was the most frightening of all of baby Jesus' visitors...the dreaded HEADLESS SHEPHERD who prowls about the fields and fens every Christmas Eve looking for "lost sheep."
There was another version of the same set...but when we picked it up, we noticed that the baby Jesus was conspicuously absent. Instead of lying peacefully in his food trough, he had somehow broken free from his moorings and was now wedged between a shepherd (with head) and one of the rafters of the stable. I wish I could afford to e-mail myself pictures from my camera, because the effect of baby Jesus trapped while trying to fly away from the manger had me literally on the floor.

I mean, can you blame him for wanting to try to fly back to heaven?  I guess that supports the theory that Jesus had full knowledge of his mission from birth...

We did encounter one more holy family in a Hallmark store that didn't consist of over-stylized cartoon characters, wistful children, cross-eyed Josephs, or utterly tacky paint jobs ...unfortunately...well...it was an "ethnic" holy family. I suppose there are few things more awkward than being white people buying a black holy family, except, of course, for trying to explain why you didn't buy the black holy family without sounding like a yuletide racist.

At this point, I think we're about ready to glue googly-eyes to popsticle sticks and arrange them in a shoebox diorama. (No, I will not use my action figures to create a Christmas scene. That's just weird, man.)

Comments

[Al T]

Hmmm, I didn't know you'd been hooded yet.

[Thomas]

That's right - he still has some time to study spelling.

[Peter Terp]

Hooded-shmooded.
You know, this week we are the fourth hit for "kresh nativity" on Google.

[Thomas]

Oh, look, now we're up to second.