The belen or Christmas creche is the central figure in many Catholic and Christian homes during the holidays. They can be as simple as a few paper cutouts mounted on board, or as elaborate as the
Greenhills Shopping Center used to have one that spanned several meters and featured a cast of dozens, both human and animal. You entered one end of a darkened corridor and were treated to a night sky and a detailed tableau arranged in subtle tiers. The figures nearer the path were larger, while those farther away were appropriately smaller. At the midpoint was the belen with the Holy Family surrounded by the three wise men and their camels, the shepherds and their flocks.
In the past, the museum’s collection used to be set up at the second floor so visitors could view them up close, but this year, they’re trying something new. Starting Dec. 16, passersby can peer through one of the museum’s windows on the street level on their way to Simbang Gabi. It will be on view until early January.
The 12 vignettes include Adam and Eve after they have partaken of the fruit, Cain standing over his dead brother Abel, and Abraham and his bound son Isaac. There’s even one with David and Bathsheba, and King Solomon with the two mothers, one of them carrying her dead infant child. Tableaux from the New Testament are less gory and include the Annunciation, the Visitation and Mary and Joseph’s flight into Egypt.
The different scenes were a way for the older generation to tell the younger ones stories from the Bible. “The labor put into creating a belen … was a learning process in itself. Children were made to ‘rediscover’ Judaeo-Christian culture as they assembled figures and landscapes,” one reads in the exhibit notes.
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