'Undiscovered Christmas' — BYU display offers a look at other cultures
Some Nativity scenes are small and simple, others life-size, ornate and elaborate. They usually come with an extended cast of characters: an angel, shepherds, wise men, sheep, cattle, donkeys and camels. A majority of Americans have traditionally pictured — and purchased — those resembling fair-skinned Caucasians.
So it's often a shock, particularly for children who have never experienced another culture, to see Mary, Joseph and company with brown faces and black hair, dressed in the native costumes of Mexico, Central or South America.
There, Jesus can be pictured not lying in a manger, but wrapped tightly to a cradleboard, housed in an adobe pueblo. Shepherds and Magi (wise men) often bring blankets, moccasins and pottery as gifts, with a tiny cross as part of the backdrop. Camels are nowhere to be found — they aren't part of the native animal population.
Katie Criddle, promotions director for Brigham Young University's Museum of Peoples and Cultures, said this past Thursday's event was expected to draw more than 200 people to the tiny museum south of campus — most of them students and families with young children.
Attendance at the museum has skyrocketed in the past year, jumping from 100 percent to 200 percent as student employees work to not only help educate the public about other cultures, but also offer community events designed to explain foreign customs to kids.
This year's event featured Nativities from the Southwest, Mexico and Latin America, though only a few of the 40 Nativities the museum owns were on display, because there is limited space amid the other exhibits in the former dormitory building.
"You see Christian truths incorporated into what these people believe," Criddle said, noting Kachina dolls — both male and female — often serve as messengers instead of the traditional wise men. "You often see coyotes and sheep rather than camels and cows."
In Portugal, she said, families often create a Nativity scene inside their own homes that reflects the community in which they live. "You'll see not only Mary and Joseph, but a washer woman, a butcher, a baker — people who make up the whole community scene."
Recent comments
I'm surprised so many have expressed anger at representations...
veedub | Dec. 21, 2007 at 3:12 p.m.
It's sad that something like this causes such grief in a person...
Dorothy | Dec. 16, 2007 at 11:01 p.m.
If people see it like that through their native eyes, then they have...
To Dortohy | Dec. 16, 2007 at 2:29 p.m.
