Silent Night, Wiolent Night

Since this year Luke is really aware of and anticipating Christmas -- mostly because of all the presents he is expecting Santa to bring him -- I decided to introduce the nativity story. Actually, it all started when  Luke saw this Little People Nativity set in the Sears catalogue and asked for it. He has a number of other Little People sets that he's recently begun to play with constantly, mostly to enact various scenes of violence:

"Let's set up a Little People town, Mama, and then this Little People school bus can crash it all up!"

"That's too violent, Luke. I don't like going to all the trouble of setting up a town when you're just going to destroy it."

"But, Mama, it's a WIOLENT town."

Hope springs eternal, I guess, because I went ahead and ordered the thing. I also picked up a copy of This Is the Stable to go along with it. We set up the manger and read the story this evening.

"Who's this, Mama?"
"That's the baby Jesus's mother, Mary."
"Who's this?"
"Um, that's Joseph, Jesus's father. Uh...I mean, stepfather. Yeah, I guess that's Jesus's stepfather."

There were a few lovely moments when we turned the lights down low and pressed the angel on its head to make the star light up and play "Silent Night." And then Luke -- who had begun rather ominously to call the angel the "rangel" and the manger the "ranger" -- asked if we could use the figures to play a version of the video game "Raft Wars." After I demurred, his stuffed cat Cheryl decided to attack. You can barely see her, she's moving so fast:

And here is the aftermath:

Silent night, indeed.

Comments

[Susan_Thomsen]

Cheryl's first visit to Bethlehem did not go as planned, eh?

[ChrisVA]

Puts me in mind of Mr. Bean's creche drama in his Christmas special. When the helicopter comes in to save the baby Jesus I always get asthma from laughing.

Merry Chrismas to your little rangel.