Nesting Nativity

An unavoidable certitude of living in a big city flat is the absence of extraneous storage space. Witness Tree, whose lights and decorations fit in a small box that shares a dresser drawer with winter jumpers and an iron. You might have recognised Tree from last Christmas, if I had blogged about him last year. He spent the time between Christmases on the balcony overlooking the Palaces at Westminster and Lambeth on the Thames. He’s now inside again to celebrate the festive season. Recently, my beloved found the perfect nativity for city flats: the nesting nativity. The three kings are all on the same doll, so you can rotate it to give each his turn facing forward. Although baby Jesus made an appearance for the photo opportunity, the nesting dolls allow for the anatomically correct ‘storage’ of a ‘preincarnate’ Jesus in Mary’s interior/womb. After the Epiphany, the whole holy lot of them can be conveniently nested for storage.

Pseudocommunity Tree

Every year at the start of advent, the managing agents for the building put big Christmas trees in the foyers of all the buildings. The tree and a box of ornaments show up on the Friday, and the staff work their way through the compound until they are all decorated, usually by the Monday. But this year something kind of cool happened. Sometime late Friday or early Saturday, someone opened the box of ornaments and placed an ornament on the tree. The next time I came by it, there was another on the tree. I didn’t witness any of it but I imagined that some residents walking past it were placing an ornament on the tree. So I joined in and placed a third ornament on the tree. I thought this was a cool little pseudocommunity activity: even though we weren’t with each other at the time, we were all contributing to a common aim in a common space. Later that evening, there were about a dozen ornaments hanging on it, which is when I took the picture above: only half the ornaments are visible in the photo as this is the approach when leaving the building, the others are visible as you enter. I imagined that additional residents' contributions were responsible for the increase. But alas, by Sunday, the staff had caught up and finish decorating… again, not witnessed, but imagined. Here is the finished tree with my honey holding her Christmas present.