This is hardly cultural, but it has become a holiday tradition for me to post this photo. It was taken a few years back (2006 or 2007) at the Kroger store in the Heights. This inflatable nativity scene was for sale. I don’t know if anyone ever bought it.

What makes the photo all the more “special” is that Mary and Joseph are situated between an ice machine and an ashtray for employee smoke breaks. Even to this day there appears to be no room for Mary and Joseph so they are shunned and put in an undesirable location.

You may note a brown item sticking out from under the baby’s swaddling. Best I can tell that is the lower half of Joseph’s staff. It appears to be I adequately inflated and somehow it got stuck under the vinyl cloth that makes up the diaper which Mary is apparently changing.

At least it wasn’t a bouncy house manger.