Festival of the Nativities

This Friday and Saturday our Stake was hosting a 'Festival of the Nativities'. We weren't sure exactly what to expect, but we were blown away. I have never seen so many nativity scenes in my life. The entire central hall was filled, and two of the side rooms as well (although one of those rooms was art of the Savior rather than nativities). They had lots and lots of 'guides' on hand to make sure people didn't handle any of the figures.

I was especially pleased at the activity they had planned for kids. Tim was handed a sheet with a whole bunch of nativities that he needed to locate in order to answer the questions. One of them, for example, was "What color is Mary's robe in the duck nativity?" See the first picture for the answer. It kept Tim busy scurrying around, and also made him really LOOK at the nativities. He had a great time.

As for Bill and me, we could not believe how many nativities have been made. The names of the contributors were on each one, and there were some people who had dozens there. Obviously they collect them. We ran into one of these collectors - Cindy Van Zeben (daughter of an old friend of mine, Pat Van Zeben) and she told us that she has over 45 sets. Wow! She has been collecting them for some time.

I am including some nativity pictures. Some of them are pretty small because I got them off the internet and they just didn't blow up very big, but the variety is incredible. (Use a magnifying glass if you need to) This is, of course, only a small selection of what was there - and I picked some of the more unusual ones. Since Bill and I are collectors ourselves (not of nativities but of many other things), I am seriously thinking about buying a couple more sets for us - of the more unusual varieties. Pity I haven't found a dragon nativity yet!

We didn't actually see ALL of these nativities at the festival, but most of them. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the Fantasy Nativity, which was a one-of-a-kind hand-crafted item, but my daughter inherited my "forget the camera" genes from me. We are really hoping that they will make this an annual event as we would LOVE to go to this again next year. And maybe this time we can make a contribution. I have my eye on a nice nativity set of red cardinals . . .