What, child, is this?

At some point near the end of her marriage, my mother again started going to church, our Christmases became a little less secular, and it fell upon me—at a mere nine years old—to assemble our family’s first nativity scene. The crèche I built out of Lego, of course; Joseph was the Olympic judo figurine I’d got from a box of Cheerios; and Mary was swiped from my sister’s set of Russian nesting dolls. The greatest abomination, however, was saved for the baby Jesus, where I pulled the hair off a tiny troll and wrapped him in swaddling clothes.

Photo based on a dim memory and the necklaces sold by Hannah Nuttall.