Last night we took the kids to a live nativity. I was really looking forward to it because I had heard great things about how it really opens the kids eyes to what happened that night so long ago. I was pretty impressed with the production of it. It started in a small room with a granmother reading a book about the Christmas story, and then a wise man came into the room and talked about taking us on a journey to Bethlehem to see what really happened. The first scene was Mary praying and then an Angel appeared out of a white screen and talked to her. Very cool. Then same thing with Joseph. We then move on to Bethlehem. They had a whole town set up really great with a blind man and beggars, and people selling thing, and then while you were looking around the town Mary and Joseph showed up on a donkey. They went door to door looking for a place to stay. We finally see someone tell them they can go into the barn. The next scene is out in the field with the shepherds and all a sudden there was a huge spotlight on all of us, and it made the kids a bit nervous (which was the intention, I'm sure) and the angel Gabriel did his thing. After he was done, the spotlight went off and there was a choir of "angels" suspended in the air above all of us singing. Pretty cool. Then we all moved on with the shepherds to go find Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus. The traditional nativity scene was fun because we had seen Mary and Joseph before and expected to see them together and the baby.

After that was the part that probably... well, I don't want to say ruined, but changed the whole memory of the night for our kids.... a voice came over the speaker and said something to the effect of "who could have known what this little baby had come to earth to do?" I expected us to go back to the town and maybe see some scenes of Jesus healing the blind man or something to that effect, but there was a huge sound of lightening and then a spotlight of a HUGE cross with a bloody Jesus sitting on it. I mean, they had the whole cross done very graffically. The kids were terrified and even though they showed a small scene of a resurrection (empty tomb-which they didn't understand) it kind of totally put a stop on their wonderment of the birth of Jesus.

We talked to a lady afterwards about it, and just mentioned that we were kind of sad that we didn't know that was coming, because we would have had the kids look in another direction or something. Our kids weren't the youngest out there and I know they weren't the only ones talking the whole drive home about "Jesus getting dead." The lady said "we can't really have the story of Jesus without having the cross." That was her explanation. Well, Easter is coming, and that is a great time to teach about the cross. I just fell like Christmas is a time to celebrate Jesus coming and remember how He touched the lives of everyone around him. I guess for me, if would have been more impactful to have a scene of Jesus healing people or something, and then if you needed to, have the cross kind of looming in the background. I think most people would know what that meant.

Anyway, all in all, I liked it. I asked Josiah what his favorite part was, and he said he didn't like Jesus being dead, and Abby said something to that effect too. Aiyana liked Mary. I'm a bit disappointed. Could have been great, but that's what my kids took away. Hopefully we can reference the things we saw when we read the story to them, and it will still give them a visual image to remember. We probably won't skip over to read the cruxifiction this Christmas though.