A Season to think about Christ

A few years after Bill and I were married, in 1991 Bill bought me the Precious Moments Mini Nativity set for Christmas. I had worked at a Hallmark gift store wehn I was in High School, and though I did get an employee discount, I didn't work that many hours, and I didn't make that much money. I fell in love with the Precious Moments Nativity set, but didn't want to spend that much money on it at the time... I was thrilled when Bill got me the P.M. Nativity set that year for Christmas.

After that year, he would get me a new piece or two or three each year for Christmas, and originally he would have it be a gift from the girls. We didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into at the time... :-) He began tracking down the old pieces of the set, to make sure we had the one's they put out each and every year. This year it is the 30th anniversary of Precious Moments, so instead of putting out a new piece this year, they seem to have redone the original 11 pc. mini nativity set, and re-released it for this year. It might be that we have the complete set and it might not get any new pieces after this year. We will just have to wait and see. I have the complete 46 pc. set. I love it. It is so sweet and I have enjoyed seeing what piece they would come up with to put out each new year.

Somewhere along the line I got another Nativity or two, and I began collecting... I never knew how many different nativities there could be. I had no plan to collect tons of them, but it just sort of happened. Now, it seems that each year as I got the new pice for my P.M. set, I also began to get a different Nativity set of some kind each year. Part of my collection became a wy to have a Nativity set for the kids to be able to play with so that they wouldn't play with my special P.M. set, even though it looks like it should be for children, as it is so cute. I was thrilled the year that I found the P.M. plastic Nativity set! Now the kids had their own P.M. set to play with! It looked just almost like moms set (just not nearly as many pieces:-).

I used to decorate our home for the Christmas season, with various different Holliday decorations. I still have some other things that are special to me, but my favorite decorations are Nativities. I like them because it helps me to keep the focus of Christmas on Christ, rather than on Santa, trees and presents.

I have begun to look specifically for sets that are slightly different - one's that perhaps not anyone else around would have or even have seen. I have tried to collect a set from various places we have lived, as well as some places we have visited.

I love that our Stake has begun having a yearly Christmas Festival, where many hundreds of Nativity's are displayed. I love to walk around and see all the different wasy the birth of our Savior are depicted by various artists and cultures. I enjoy knowing that I have so many Nativities to donate and put out for display each year. The hardest part for us is that because we take so many of our nativities to set up for the display, we don't get to decorate our own home until after the festival is over. This year we have set up a ew of the one's that we know others in the Stake have and usually bring to share, so that we can keep a few at home and set them up for our family to enjoy every day throughout the season.