At the beginning of December, the Hobbs House bakery in Gloucestershire, England, made bread rolls into an unusual Nativity that makes you smile—and think too!
They used sourdough bread to create Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the three Magi. Baby Jesus was represented by a baguette resting inside a rye bread manger. “I just cut one end off flat for them to stand up on, and then varnished them twice so they don’t shrink or mould,” bakery employee Amanda Jane told Elizabeth Hunter of SWNS news service, in an article picked up by various media outlets. Even the Star of Bethlehem is a “bakery creation.”
In addition, they added small black eyes to each figure, along with simple clothing. The Virgin wears her Marian color (blue), Joseph and Jesus wear brown cloth, and the shepherds sport burlap and candy canes as their crooks, while crowns distinguish the wise men.
Beyond the humorous and surprising aspect of this crib lies an important message: that of Jesus, the bread of life (Jn 6:35), who comes down from Heaven to give life to the world. It’s the same logic behind the fact that the hymn “Panis Angelicus” — “Angelic Bread,” a Eucharistic text written by St. Thomas Aquinas for the feast of Corpus Christi — is a staple at Christmas. And indeed, Bethlehem literally means “house of bread.”
