Jesse Tree and St. Nicholas Vignettes

Kh. Linda Funk of St. Vincent of Lerins Church in Saskatoon, Saskatachewan, Canada contributed the attached resources with the following explanation:

Last year, for the first time, we started a Jesse Tree. I used the material from your website, as well as several other websites and blogs. I presented it as a history of salvation and made some slight revisions to reflect our typology. For example, I made the symbol for the flood to be the ark, not the rainbow because the ark is a type of the church in our theology.

We had the children sign up to make one symbol each. On Sundays, a few of them would tell about their person/event in about 2 sentences to the rest of the parish before coffee hour. Then they hung their symbol on a small tree. We used a tender icon of the Theotokos with Christ for the tree topper. We didn't get all the symbols done this year, so it will be an ongoing project. With the help of one of the teachers, I emailed supplementary information to the parents to help them make the typological connection between the person/event and Christ (or the Theotokos or the Church) in case they couldn't do that from the scripture readings alone.

I also wrote some St. Nicholas vignettes for our church school. They're short, but can be joined together as scenes in a longer production, if so wished. We've given up on trying to do a Christmas play/concert. It always has to be done out of season because people are either away or too busy during the festal season. As an alternative, we've switched to St. Nicholas. We have a shortened evening divine liturgy at 5:30, then a potluck supper, the vignette, and a visit from St. Nicholas and candy bags that always include a few chocolate gold coins. It's been quite successful. It wraps up about 8:00 and we encourage the families with younger children to make this one of the special times of the year when they can look forward to getting to stay up late.