Our grandchildren (fifty fifty girls and boys) made this Christmas stall. Each year they added a few more molded figures. Those are of unbaked clay and therefore very fragile, but we preserve them carefully. The children took it for granted to sculpt queens and shepherdesses in addition to kings and shepherds. And they thought that next to Maria the Mexican Guadalupe should also be present (instead of blue dress, pink face and blond hair: green dress, brown face and black hair!). And because they considered it "unfair" that there was only this little boy Jesus in the manger, they modeled a second manger beside it with a girl in it and called her Jesa!

Christmas 2019, Anne-Ruth Wertheim