How to bring the spirit of Christmas to your city

Sister Clara María tells us how an initiative to bring Christmas to the city is viable. What you need is the initiative, some volunteers… and a lot of creativity. It is worth mentioning that this has been achieved in what may be the most secular country in Latin America.

Mobile Nativity Scene, Christmas on the move

When Pope Francis was a bishop in the city of Buenos Aires, he devised a mobile nativity scene that traveled along the city’s main avenues.

This initiative inspired a “manger on the go” in the city of Nueva Helvecia, Uruguay, where the first Schoenstatt daughter shrine is located, where, currently, there is no parish priest and the people receive very little religious nourishment.

From our school, the Sisters of Mary invited mothers and fathers to organize it, and in a few days we were able to experience a great miracle.

The van carrying the Holy Family and the Three Wise Men departed from our Shrine. It had been decorated like a country carriage with Christmas ornaments. The Wise Men carried boxes with little bags to hand out on the way: inside, there was candy and a prayer to bless the Christmas table.

The van moved forward with its own sound system proclaiming the coming Christmas, briefly expressing what the celebration was about, mixed with Christmas carols. It traveled through the main avenues of the city. The missionaries entered homes for the elderly and some poor neighborhoods until they arrived at the central square.

Dances, living nativity scene and many shepherds and angels.

 

There was a dance show performed by a folkloric ballet of local children and then there was the enactment of a living nativity scene. We had announced on radio that all the children of the city could participate dressed as shepherds or angels. So it was that the square was filled with happy children, accompanied by their parents and grandparents.

When the crowning moment of the birth of Jesus arrived, the girl who represented Mary, raised him high and the whole square burst into a single round of applause.

There was plenty of room for the Three Wise Men. When they showed up among the trees, the children in their multicolored costumes and those who had come out of curiosity and were not in the “cast”, ran to meet them. Then they wanted to take pictures with them, next to the large Christmas tree.

Everyone received the candy and the prayer, and after an unforgettable afternoon, they returned to their homes.

The Child Jesus himself went out on the streets this time, accompanied by his Mother, St. Joseph and the Kings, to look for those in need. And several hundred were grateful for this visit, for his blessing, and for his message of hope.

You can also read: Born of the Virgin Mary