I have been hugely enjoying the comments on my last post about trimming the Christmas tree! Thank you so much! Your responses have been a real bright spot in our restricted, quarantined season. In the midst of this on-line camaraderie I was surprised to receive a comment from a stranger on a similar post I made in 2011. (Wha???) It was our first year in our new house and we had a ten foot Christmas tree (never again, that thing weighed a ton) to celebrate the high ceiling in our living room. I also went around and documented a few other decorations that had been in storage for seven years and were newly on display again, including this cardboard nativity scene from Mike's family. Still stored in its original box, it is made of flat printed pieces that get held upright by fold-up tabs in the cardboard base. The hole in the stable ceiling was meant for one of those old, large Christmas tree lights that I don't think the structure could support anyway. The star on top has fallen apart and is now only made viable by propping the fragments of its former structure behind it. Apparently my commenter had an identical nativity scene in his childhood and ferreted out my image through Google...(again, Wha???) He noted the probable fire hazard of sticking one of those old lights into a paper decoration and we agreed that the position of the "colored wise man" (so described on the appropriate tab) outside with the camels was a good example of the generally unnoticed racism of the fifties. To be fair, the kneeling wise man also has dark skin, and the designers of this scene could have used only white people with no one being the wiser (ha ha), but still, in these fraught times the apparent political incorrectness is glaring. It is a reminder of the ways ideas change, often for the better. Having someone reach out of the ether to engage gently on this bit of nostalgia reminds me also of how closely connected we are. Merry Christmas to everyone on the internet.