The Christmas Crib!
‘Crib-making’ is one of the most
important parts of Christmas celebration accompanied by baking of various types
of cake, making Christmas-sweets, cleaning and decorating our homes, putting up
the Christmas tree, cooking turkey, chicken, beef and well yes attending the
midnight mass in our new Christmas dress.
Being an East-Indian Catholic and
having Virar as my native, I am lucky to be with my cousins for every Christmas
and we plan something new for the crib every year. Moreover I make it a point
to visit every possible locality within and around my parish to witness the
creativity brought about by the youth every Christmas. Here are some of the
best crib ideas that fascinated me and I believe you will love them too J (P.S: Forgive me for
the picture quality because of the lack of a quality camera and my amazing
photography skills ;) :P)
1. Birth of Christ Jesus in a typical East Indian village
The villages in olden times had houses made basically from
bricks, mortar but internally had walls prepared using tree twigs and held
together with dung. The floor was made of dung and the roof had red tiles. The
above picture shows the house with a huge front space and typical utensils and
containers of the olden times. A lot of
sweat and work was put by the village youth to depict a village. The basic idea
was to show baby Jesus being born in a village that lived in natural
conditions, reminded us of the historical times when cattle and dung were the
center of people’s lives and which were also the conditions in which Jesus was
born in Bethlehem. Thus the creativity to show the birth of Christ by depicting
our cultural history awed me.
2. Jesus is born on a cart
The bullock-cart or
even a horse-cart was a symbol of honour in olden times. It was a vehicle used
by
3. Birth of Christ in a secular society
This idea was and shall always remain the first on my list.
A wonderful concept but unfortunately I did not own a phone or a camera then,
to capture the creation. The crib was basically a light and sound show created
by the ‘Nanbhat’ parish youth. They had created movable models of the Catholic
church, mosque and the Hindu temple in a lake. The initial part of the show
portrayed the three structures separate and thus there was strife and disturbance
in the society.
The three structures then start moving slowly towards each
other. The moment they come together and become one, baby Jesus is born. It is
shown by a baby statue emanating from the center of these structures. The heart
touching commentary and the light effects made it a moment to remember.
4. Vegetable crib (yea literally! :P)
The lovely arrangement of the soil and stones depicting
roads draws our attention, but hey! Do notice the off white container kind off
thingy that looks like a weird shaped egg cover holding the holy family. It’s
the best example of using organic matter for crib making. The white shell
thingy is actually a dried gourd with only it’s cover spared. Beautiful indeed
:D
5. Our clichéd crib
Oh yes, this what we made at home almost every year until we
witnessed the creativity used in crib making by our fellow friends which
encouraged us too to whack our brains and bring out the creativity in ourselves.
Nevertheless it is one of my favorite designs and quite a self-explanatory
simple one. And before I forget to mention, I made that house from my left out
printer box (best outta waste :P) and used minimum decoration.
Thankyou peeps for the read! I shall try better pictures next time. Please post your comments with regard to what you loved and if any suggestions from your side. Good day folks :)
~AL
~AL
Comments