This beautiful Fontanini Wooden Christmas Stable
is approximately 10” at its tallest point, 14” across, and 6.5” deep. The Wooden Christmas Stable is made of wood, moss, and bark. This Wooden Christmas Stable is perfect for your first nativity set. The outside of the roof is covered with lush sphagnum moss. There are a few clumps of sphagnum moss on the inside of the back wall and the floor of the Fontanini Stable. There is a short wall on one side of the Wooden Stable and a short support pillar on the other side of the Stable that has a covering of bark strips. There are two, staggered, lofts across the back of the Fontanini Stable.
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Frankincense:
The gift of the wise man Gaspar to the baby Jesus, a symbol of Christ’s divinity and worship. Also known as olibanum, it is a fragrant gum resin from African trees of genus boswellia long used as incense in religious services.
There are a number ideas about the symbolism of the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. One suggests the gold represented a gift fit for a king. Frankincense was given as a symbol of Jesus becoming the high priest. Myrrh was used in making medicines and would symbolize Jesus becoming a great physician and healer. Another opinion is that these gifts were a kind of symbolic foreshadowing of what the life of this baby would be. Gold, given in recognition of Jesus being a king. Frankincense and myrrh were used to prepare a corpse for burial. Thus these two gifts would foreshadow the dark end Jesus would meet on the cross.
Frankincense is a fragrant gum resin obtained from certain trees that grow in east Africa and southern Arabia. It gives forth a strong, pleasant odor when it is burned. The ancient Hebrews, Greeks and Romans used the gum for religious rites. The name comes from two French words, franc, meaning pure and ences, meaning incense. The scientific name for frankincense is olibanum. It comes to the market in the form of pale colored globules, called tears. Frankincense has been used for embalming, fumigating and as an ingredient of incense. The ancient Egyptians used it in medicines. The fragrant gum resin is used as a raw material for perfumes. Harvesters cut into the bark of the trees and collect the resin in the form of colorless to pale yellow drops called tears. Perfumers extract oil from the tears by dissolving them in alcohol, then passing steam through them. The oil gives perfumes a long-lasting, spicy fragrance.
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The Christmas Crib
In the year 1220 St, Francis of Assissi visited Bethlehem. He liked the way the Christmas was celebrated there so much, that he asked the Pope for permission to recreate it in his own Italian village.
He built a manger in a cave. In it he placed a stone image of the baby Jesus. He surrounded the manger with real animals. Then he said a Mass (communion). The people found it so moving that they said it was possible to believe you were there at the actual birth of Jesus.
Before long, wooden nativity scenes were displayed in churches and homes across Europe. Today they continue to be popular as a way of reminding us of what Christmas is really about, the birth of Jesus.
The tradition was brought into Spain from Naples during the reign of Charles III of Spain.
In Catalonia, a figure is included that represents a Catalan peasant.
In Provence, in the South of France, nativity scenes are sometimes made up of hundreds of small painted clay figurines called Santon. They represent all the traditional trades and professions of old Provence. Because of their cultural value the Santons are often collected as art or craft objects, regardless of their possible use in a nativity scene.
A nativity scene, also called a crib or crèche, generally depicts the birth or birthplace of Jesus. Nativity scenes, in two dimensions or three, usually show Jesus in a manger, with Joseph, and Mary in a barn intended for the housing of animals. A mule, ox, sheep, and sometimes other barnyard animals, surround them. The scene sometimes includes three wise men, shepherds, angels and the Star of Bethlehem.
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