It was meant to be, if not quite an heirloom, a tradition to be passed on to my grandchildren. Grannie’s nativity – created in a bygone era when people had the leisure, ingenuity and sheer bad taste to do such things.
The nativity came out of a rather sad period of my life (for recipients, not for me – I was loving it) when I made everything out of papier mache. My nativity represented a creative peak – after which I was able to move on, calm down and return to the tamer shores of jam-making.
The size of the nativity was dictated by the polystyrene balls obtainable from my local art shop, and the amount of plasticine I could summon up from about the house. Each figure was modelled, headless, in plasticine, and coated and Vaseline, then papier mache. Once hardened, I split and removed the papier mache shell, reassembled it with a coin inside for stability, attached the polystyrene head with a matchstick….oh, you get the idea. The result, painted and varnished, looked pretty good, particularly when I thought of lining the rather nasty cardboard ‘stable’ with foil, and lighting candles inside.
Every Twelfth Night my papier mache cast returns to a bin-liner in the attic, and every Christmas it re-emerges slightly the worse for wear. First, the donkey’s ears got bent. Then the clear varnish began yellowing, giving the angel of the Lord a streaky, nicotine-stained look. The stout shepherd (adolescent puppy-fat, I had decided, having somehow overdone the plasticine at an early stage) lost his ability to stand unaided and now has to lean drunkenly each year against the crooked-eared donkey. But worst of all, my best king’s head fell off. Last year, I made it a whole new papier mache neck. But this year, as I unpacked, out it rolled, like a French aristocrat after a bad day at the tumbrels. I have glued it back, but he will never be the same.
And now Jesus’s halo is bent.
Every year I think I’ve lost Baby Jesus, a tiny cigar-end shaped slug of yellowing papier mache; and that, or course, will be the end of that. But every year he turns up, caught in a corner of the stable, or bowling along the carpet with the disembodied king, ready to be reinstated in his cardboard manger. So every year Mary kneels totteringly before him, and Joseph, tall and thin and slightly disapproving, balances behind.
What do you do with a dying nativity? I can hardly put the Holy Family and all their friends on the fire, or out in the wheelie bin with the wrapping paper.
What has happened is what I wanted to happen. My nativity has become more than just wallpaper paste and poster paint. It has become, if not quite a tradition, greater than the sum of its various tatty parts. In a very modest way, it has become a Sacred Thing.
So that’s that. I am obliged to join the fat shepherd and the headless king and make my obeisance before the bent halo of the Infant Christ. They have brought Him a papier mache sheep that looks more like a small bear, and a tiny gold box of frankinscence. I have brought Superglue and a sense of resignation, only slightly tinged with pride.
The nativity came out of a rather sad period of my life (for recipients, not for me – I was loving it) when I made everything out of papier mache. My nativity represented a creative peak – after which I was able to move on, calm down and return to the tamer shores of jam-making.
The size of the nativity was dictated by the polystyrene balls obtainable from my local art shop, and the amount of plasticine I could summon up from about the house. Each figure was modelled, headless, in plasticine, and coated and Vaseline, then papier mache. Once hardened, I split and removed the papier mache shell, reassembled it with a coin inside for stability, attached the polystyrene head with a matchstick….oh, you get the idea. The result, painted and varnished, looked pretty good, particularly when I thought of lining the rather nasty cardboard ‘stable’ with foil, and lighting candles inside.
Every Twelfth Night my papier mache cast returns to a bin-liner in the attic, and every Christmas it re-emerges slightly the worse for wear. First, the donkey’s ears got bent. Then the clear varnish began yellowing, giving the angel of the Lord a streaky, nicotine-stained look. The stout shepherd (adolescent puppy-fat, I had decided, having somehow overdone the plasticine at an early stage) lost his ability to stand unaided and now has to lean drunkenly each year against the crooked-eared donkey. But worst of all, my best king’s head fell off. Last year, I made it a whole new papier mache neck. But this year, as I unpacked, out it rolled, like a French aristocrat after a bad day at the tumbrels. I have glued it back, but he will never be the same.
And now Jesus’s halo is bent.
Every year I think I’ve lost Baby Jesus, a tiny cigar-end shaped slug of yellowing papier mache; and that, or course, will be the end of that. But every year he turns up, caught in a corner of the stable, or bowling along the carpet with the disembodied king, ready to be reinstated in his cardboard manger. So every year Mary kneels totteringly before him, and Joseph, tall and thin and slightly disapproving, balances behind.
What do you do with a dying nativity? I can hardly put the Holy Family and all their friends on the fire, or out in the wheelie bin with the wrapping paper.
What has happened is what I wanted to happen. My nativity has become more than just wallpaper paste and poster paint. It has become, if not quite a tradition, greater than the sum of its various tatty parts. In a very modest way, it has become a Sacred Thing.
So that’s that. I am obliged to join the fat shepherd and the headless king and make my obeisance before the bent halo of the Infant Christ. They have brought Him a papier mache sheep that looks more like a small bear, and a tiny gold box of frankinscence. I have brought Superglue and a sense of resignation, only slightly tinged with pride.
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