Truth be told, Gut Check slept through a few sessions of Sunday school. But wasn't there something in the Bible about not making graven images? What about making the Baby Jesus out of food and eating him?
Because a lot of people are doing that.
A Concerned Canadian asked the Saskatoon Star Phoenix about the chances of going to Hell for eating a sweet, sweet, chocolate Baby Jesus that's "both devout and delicious".
You might get away with biting the turbaned heads off the wise men. You probably would not face divine retribution for consuming, one scrumptious limb at a time, the peripheral fi gures of Joseph, Mary and the herald angels. To devour a representation of the baby Jesus, however, cannot be good. Depending on your denomination, this could qualify as a frying sin.
(Frying sins are the ones that send people to the really, really hot department of Hell.)
And yet, people persist in making nativities from food, despite the one-way ticket to damnation, either from eating Baby Jesus, or from wasting all that food. Surely making something from chocolate or cookies or cheese, only to throw it away is at least a braising sin. Think about your eternal life before embarking on any of these manger mangers.
In Eastern Europe the nativity has been stamped on communion wafers called Oplatki for ages. The body of Baby Jesus is probably much more tender.
Get the kiddos started early on the Baby Jesus-eating with the Nativity Baking Set! Children ages six and up, with adult supervision, can use this 18-piece set to craft a gingerbread nativity.
Maybe this would be the time to tell the whole story from beginning to end and the children can observe how everyone came together to this special place and what Christmas is all about.
But how do you explain the part were the manger and everyone in it gets eaten by giants?
Baby Jesus was sweeter than gingerbread, right? So why not render him in the most tooth-rottingly pile of glucose this side of sculpting him from a pile of white refined sugar - fondant! Come, they told me, diabet-abet-es!
On the more flavorful side of sweet, go for the chocolate nativity. Chocolatiers from Rute, Spain, made a nativity from a ton and a half of chocolate.
Don't have room for a 62 meter chocolate city in your home? Nobody does these days. An Occasional Chocolate sells chocolate molds for the DIYer. Combine it with an order of sucker sticks and you can make your very own Christ on a Stick.
Baby Jesus made of cheeses!
At the holidays, where there's cheese, there's always a platter of cured meats. The same applies in the world of edible nativities.
