I’m an Episcopal priest. At a parish I served in some years back, we had a custom of giving kids animals from the nativity scene to carry in procession and place around the manger at the Christmas Eve service. I would be at the end of the procession to place the Christ child in the manger and then cense the scene before saying the opening prayers. I do so and happen to catch something out of the ordinary: a tiny rubber dinosaur has somehow made it into Bethlehem. So I start the service by noting this and the church has a good chuckle.
No one ever fessed to putting in there, but it became a fixture in the parish’s nativity scene from then on (with kids occasionally clamoring to be the one to carry the dinosaur in the procession).
I’m an Episcopal priest. At a parish I served in some years back, we had a custom of giving kids animals from the nativity scene to carry in procession and place around the manger at the Christmas Eve service. I would be at the end of the procession to place the Christ child in the manger and then cense the scene before saying the opening prayers. I do so and happen to catch something out of the ordinary: a tiny rubber dinosaur has somehow made it into Bethlehem. So I start the service by noting this and the church has a good chuckle.
No one ever fessed to putting in there, but it became a fixture in the parish’s nativity scene from then on (with kids occasionally clamoring to be the one to carry the dinosaur in the procession).