This is my grandmother’s nativity scene. She painted all of the pieces in a ceramics class many years ago and it’s been a part of my Christmas memories for as far back as I can remember. The donkey may be missing his ears, one of the wise men appears to have broken the top to his Frankincense container, and the shepherd on the left only has one leg, but I still love it all dearly.

When I was little I would spend a huge amount of time arranging and rearranging the figurines. Then I would inevitably have to do it all over again after a meddling relative would move the people and animals back into their “proper places.” I treated the nativity scene like my own personal dollhouse. Yeah, She-Ra was cool and I loved my Crystal Castle, but She-Ra didn’t have lambs and an itty bitty baby Jesus that fit perfectly in my mischievous little hand.

Honestly I can’t believe that the poor little guy is still in one piece as I not only used him as Ken and Barbie’s stand-in baby, but also was known to take him in the bath with me. Maybe I was pretending he was baby Moses floating down the Nile? I doubt it though. More likely than not I probably coverd him in green sparkly roll-on soap and pretended he was Kermit the Frog.