Christmas Eve Shepherd’s Meal and Nativity

On Christmas Eve this year, we decided to have a “Shepherd’s Meal” for our dinner, the idea being that we would eat foods the shepherds in Jesus’ time might have eaten. I had grand plans of having everyone eat Middle Eastern finger foods while sitting on pillows on the floor in candlelight, but in the end, that seemed like a bad idea with our little crew. Instead, we had soup and pita bread, kabobs, rice, dried apricots and other mediterranean foods on paper plates at the table! Maybe next year we’ll expand a little and eat something more authentic, but for this year, it worked.

After dinner, the girls were so excited to dress up in our nativity costumes as we put on our mini nativity. We will definitely have to come up with a system to rotate roles so that everyone gets to play their preferred part, because fights broke out over who got to be the coveted role of Mary. We flipped a coin and Samantha won Mary, Meredith was an angel, Amelia was a shepherd and Eleanor was uncontested in her role of Baby Jesus.

The Angel arrives.

Grammy and Eleanor were entertained.

Attempting to wrap Eleanor in “swaddling clothes.”

Our nativity production was very streamlined, but the girls loved “acting.”

We finally got to use the very expensive plateĀ  I won at the school’s silent auction that Samantha’s class made. Hope Santa and the reindeer enjoyed!

Lots of love,

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