The Gift Shop at the Oratory

I spent one Christmas looking for nativity sets that I could use with Alice – something cute, and only semi-breakable.

But there was nothing in either category. At least in the stores I visited.

In fact that was the year I thought Christmas had died. I couldn’t find nativities at any store, and I went from Walmart to expensive stores.  In the end I found a Peruvian nativity at One Thousand Villages – and that was all. Oh, I had found one set at Walmart but the faces on the figures were so sloppily painted that they looked more like Halloween figures than Christmas ones.

So this year,  thinking that the gift shop at St. Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal might have something, given they used to have the best collection I had ever seen of crèches, I went there today.

Catherine gave me directions – the metro and then a bus. And a perpetual running shuttle will take a person from the road, up to the main door of the oratory, which is enough steps to do in, even the most fit person.

3 sets, 3 dolls in each set

I wandered the gift shop and then a glass display case by the admission to the church kiosk.

I tried to follow the rule WWWD.

(What Would Wyona Do?).

I could hear her voice in the background – “you have taken the time to come here, now buy what you want, and not just one but two or three".

A set of nesting figures was so cute I could no longer keep my money in my wallet.

I can hardly wait for tomorrow when Hebe and I can open the package and begin to put the dolls together and then take them apart again.

I love this part of Christmas.

Arta