A few Christmases back, it occurred to my wife that we should have a children’s manger scene for the kids to play with. The idea was to keep them away from the delicate grown-up one, and it worked really well. All the figures (Jesus, Joseph, Mary, shepherds, wise men, etc.) are made of hard plastic, as is the actual manger itself. It even has a button so you can make the star light up. The kids absolutely love it.<\/p>\n
To be honest, I’m not exactly sure why, but that’s okay. It’s just great to have them get so excited about a Christmas decoration.<\/p>\n
Our other decorations are a fairly typical mix of religious and silly. In addition to the manger scenes, for example, we have a gaudy little tabletop merry-go-round that beeps out Christmas songs as it turns and flashes lights. This runs a close second in the kids’s hearts to the manger scene. If they’re not re-arranging the holy family, they’re watching the merry-go-round turn.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, I heard the familiar beeping of the merry-go-round as I was cleaning in the kitchen. I ignored it, of course, figuring that it was just the annual popularity contest of Jesus vs. the carousel.<\/p>\n
My wife, however, tapped me on the shoulder and quietly led me out to see what was going on.<\/p>\n
Our oldest (the five year old) had put the manger figures on the carousel and turned it on. The members of the holy family – along with the little plastic shepherds and wise men – were standing among the horses of the carousel, riding around in circles to the thing’s electronic rendition of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen<\/em>.<\/p>\n Giving baby Jesus a ride on a carousel. Now isn’t that just what Christmas is all about?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few Christmases back, it occurred to my wife that we should have a children’s manger scene for the kids to play with. The idea was to keep them away from the delicate grown-up one, and it worked really well. All the figures (Jesus, Joseph, Mary, shepherds, wise men, etc.) are made of hard plastic, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[123,118,119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-cute","category-daddytales-c","category-daddytales-funny"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-8DD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}