Christmas Crib (Nativity Scene)

Christmas Crib (Nativity Scene) is a visual representation of Christ's birthplace and related events which happened on that day. It usually contains sculpture/picture of, Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus inside the stable (will also have an ox and donkey), Angels singing Gloria, Shepherds with sheep’s, and the Three wise men coming to visit Jesus. And also there will be the star which leads the wise men to Bethlehem. It’s said St Francis of Assisi started the tradition of making sculptures for crib.

When i was young me and my brother used to make a "traditional" crib on the 24th of dec.. Yeah a keralite version of crib. The keralite crib of ours had some extra addins like.. black mountains, rivers, well , ponds..etc etc.. and we used to make miniature versions of green pastures by sowing "thena" ( i don’t know the English name of that) and Mustard seeds..the seeds usually germinates in 2 - 3 days and will look like a miniature version of green pasture. Mountains were created by painting newspaper with charcoal, and keeping it over rock pieces which will be made it in to the shape of mountains. The Well and Ponds were created by filling water inside hard shell of coconut. .. Everyone who made crib used their own imagination to make it more attractive... but the problem was sometimes u can see weird stuff inside crib.. I remember once seeing some penguins and polar bear inside the crib :( ....

Below are two images i got from net. Its from Kerala... a keralite crib u can say