Step back, step forward, more nativity scenes - 15, 21, 22, 23

Although I concentrated quite a few of the Christmas related scenes in the first week, I didn't want to bunch the rest of them up too much and I also wanted to kind of keep coming back to the nativity each Sunday. The problem was that some of the scenes were really part of the final nativity scene or technically just after it, when the calendar is over with.  I'd already made my calendar 25-29 days because it is based on the 4 Sundays of Advent, not the calendar month of dates.

I did think of extending the calendar even further to include these scenes but I was struggling enough with 29! I decided there would be some foreshadowing and some would be towards the end.

I decided there had to be a Christmas link to all 4 Sundays. Hence Mary and her Angel for scene 1, John's call for Jesus' coming at 8, and then further scenes at 15 and 22.

The easy one to move a little earlier was number 15 - the wise men (and women?).

Obviously they would have been studying the "star" before they started travelling so they could be moved further up the sequence, and depicted in that part of their story. I made sure that their scene would look directly at the star, which was also going to be in the picture as a later stage. Hence the telescope does not look up into the sky.

More map fabric here - I mean it's amazing stuff, and they are planning a journey so why not?

I decided I would try and make one of the figures a woman because why not?  Also stolen from a friend who made me a nativity set from clay with a female wise person.
I also deliberately decided that they would be darker looking people, as tradition says they visited Jesus from Africa, and were definitely from West of Israel.

Just before the final sequence I placed a scene for "no room at the inn" (21).

Here too as I mentioned I decided the innkeeper could be a woman.

I also made use of a map fabric scrap again, to emphasise the inn as a place for travelers and the end of the journey. I like that a negative scene also was not highlighted in a Sunday, which was less deliberate than it was pushed aside for a more interesting scene after.




For  scene 22 I decided I would just have to have the shepherds being sung to early as there was no way to make them have an earlier scene. The angels don't say "Jesus will  be born soon", they say he is born. But I decided 22 was near enough.

Similarly with 23, I decided it's not really a surprise what the gifts of the wise men were, so I just put them as near to the end as possible. They are shown as what they are or represent - gold for kingship, (frank)incense for divinity, myrrh (for his sacrificial death).