The Nativity

I love how each of our extended families have different Christmas Eve traditions. My favorite tradition with Troy's family is acting out the Nativity with characters and costumes. I'll admit that while we always have good intentions for the play to be reverent and thought provoking, it usually ends up becoming quite humorous.

For example, how could we not be amused by our humongous and very wiggly baby Jesus? 

He was still sweet, of course, but he was not a fan of being "wrapped in swaddling clothes." The poor boy just wanted mobility and freedom! It wasn't quite the same experience having an almost one year old play the part of baby Jesus as our Nativity three years ago where Blake was only two weeks old.

Now that Blake is big, he got to play the part of a sheep.

And Grandma was the (female) shepherd.

The sheep adored that gigantic baby Jesus.

We cast the newest member of our family and the rookie to this tradition as Joseph (adorned with a towel, scarf, and monkey?).

We came up with glamorous costumes for the Wise Men.

There may have been some rambunctious renditions of Christmas carols and we are far from taking our act to the stage, but our production is a tradition I look forward to when we spend Christmas with the Tanners.