It’s that time of the year again. Christmas is round the corner. My advance greetings to everyone

Am going to talk about a uniquely Christmas activity - the making of cribs. For those not in the know, the ‘crib’ is prepared in most homes at the time of the festival - it represents the circumstances surrounding Christ’s birth. It holds special symbolic significance to Christians as Christ is supposed to have been born in a manger - an open box used for holding feed for livestock (a picture is shown below).

So kids at most homes have a gala time preparing the crib. When I was young we used to have an elaborately choreographed crib making. We used to first spread charcoal on large papers to make it resemble rock formations and then arrange them so that they appear in the form of a cave on the mountainside. The actual crib would then be placed inside this decoration with the associated figurines - usually some cattle and the baby’s parents. Think the picture below would make the final outcome clearer. Man, how I wish I had photographed those self made cribs in the earlier years

The custom of making cribs is one of the few activities with clear starting points. It was first done by a person called Francis of Assisi (same person who founded the Franciscan Order which continues to this day) in the year 1223 AD at an Italian town called Greccio. The arrangement proved very popular and was copied widely from then onwards.