As we approach the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time, we thought we could look back at what happened in December for the source of our hope in every liturgical season:

 

The Nativity of Jesus came alive for us in late December 2021 – all of us from the parish and those of our neighbourhood who had come across the unfolding Nativity Scene stopped and appreciated it. Even our other furry neighbours were also spotted on Instagram!

Grocery.GoldenDoodle writes on their Instagram wall of their morning at the Manger: “In the presence of awesomeness!”

Permission given by owner to share the post

 Let us go behind the scenes in an interview with Edwin Tong, who had led this Christmas project. After 6 months of hard work conceptualising, planning, buying, building, setting up, and creating, the story of the Nativity came alive for us!

 

Hey Edwin, thanks for representing everyone in what went on behind the scenes. So what was the initial idea for the life-sized Nativity of Jesus?

The initial idea was to buy or import life sized statues perhaps combined with some do-it-yourself (DIY) elements and to approach a carpenter to build a manger based on a set of specifications.

It does look so professionally built! Did you guys really get a contractor to come to church to build the whole Manger?

No… The challenge thrown to us was to build a life-sized manger! Haha… And we took on the challenge and said YES. We ended up building the Nativity of Jesus Manger and all within that ourselves, from scratch.

We thought, how should we build the structure for the manger – the idea was to collect unused pallet wood and DIY-build the manger from scratch.  And for the Holy Family and 3 wise men, we decided to use mannequins for the figures and dress them up with textile that we eventually sewed it together. Not forgetting the details of the gold, frankincense, myrrh and all the other details were also put together.

The handy work done and details were simply amazing! Share with us what were some of your thoughts of the goal and the objective as you and the team put this together? 

We had never done this of such a scale before. So the big goal was to complete the task. And to make sure that we eventually have a scene that would benefit the Christmas season for parishioners – something to break the monotony of COVID-19.

Noticing that the characters in the story were “moving” throughout our church on the different days – the wise men were seen at the alley way near the garden, Mary and Joseph at the St Michael statue and later, at the side entrance, before all the characters finally arrived at the Manager. And baby Jesus was enthroned only after midnight. I was particularly moved by the well-thought out story coming to live and the effort in the details. It really caught my attention and made me wonder as the story unfolded. 

Talk to us a little bit more of what went behind the scenes?

This was purely random and Holy Spirit led. The original intent was to keep the costumes out of the rain as far as possible, to prevent them from getting wet. It was only when we started doing it that the idea of ‘why not make it look like they were journeying to Bethlehem’ and moving them closer to the manger as the weeks progressed kicked in. Also, portraying a pregnant Mary was really just a ‘why not’ moment. It turned out for the best!

How were the items and props made?

For Joseph and Mary, the base costumes were middle eastern prayer Thobes. For the 3 kings, the base costumes were Star Wars inspired costume cloaks. These were all purchased online. The fabrics and materials used for the details were purchased at Chinatown and hand-sewn and later, styled. The gifts that you see, are actually vases and containers from Ikea, which were spray painted in gold. The tassels on the gifts were hand-made and learnt from YouTube.

Indeed, the talents that you and the team have has been used for the kingdom of God for sisters and brothers in Christ to encounter the word come alive for us through art.

I hope no sheep got lost along the way. It must have been a challenge to find the sheep and the mannequins with supply chain issues during Covid-19, what were the challenges faced in putting these all together?

Sourcing for the numerous items / details. Shipping lead-times were delayed due to COVID and had to be taken into consideration during planning. Sourcing for the unused pallets / arranging for man-power / lorry to transport them to church. Preparing the wood / removing nails from the pallet wood before construction can begin. Constructing the manger structure in November when its rainy season. Coconut leaves had to be harvest by climbing the tree, weaving them together to form the roof coverings.

The sheep had to be sourced and purchased online and shipped in from China. The mannequins were also purchased online through carousel as local shops did not have ample supply due to COVID pandemic.

As the days went by, I was excited to see what was to come. Each time I visited the church, I would look out for how the construction went and whether anything has changed.

How did you and the team feel when setting up and seeing it come to life?

Wow… Seeing it come together made all the struggles worthwhile.Simply worth every effort.

As we celebrated the birth of Christ with our sisters and brothers from our parish, others in the hood’ were also introduced to the nativity scene of how baby Jesus was born and many came to know him through this way.

As Christmas Octave ended and we had all experienced Jesus’ hope, love, peace and joy. What were your reflections at tear down?

Bittersweet. It took almost 6 months from conceptualizing, to construction and the setup. But to take it down, it took us only 2 days. Definitely bittersweet.

If there is a next time, we will certainly know better what pitfalls to avoid.

On behalf of the whole parish, a big thank you Decorations Team for all that you have gifted to us through the Nativity of Jesus scene!

Special mention to members and volunteers involved:

Edwin Tong, Jonas Joseph, Vincent Chua, Mervyn Wong, David Lee, Aaron Lee, Dominic, Theresa Tay, Jenny Ang

See more of all from behind the scenes here

Contributor: Edwin Tong

Interviewed by: Julianne Danielle Lim