Gift= A BLUNDER

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This invisible innkeeper is a beautiful character in a way because we have very little clue on who played this role. Whomever the relative was, distant or otherwise, we can safely cast male or female, old or young, to play the part. This craft is therefore very generic and can be used with any group familiar with the hero resources.

Print out one template page per small group or per child if you wish. You will also need standard white paper or tracing paper, a pencil, a dark felt tip pen and things to colour with. Depending on how you do this activity you may also need scissors and perhaps paper glue. For printing in Gray-scale PDF – 1 page

Explain to the children that this template is just a guide. Using the guide we are going to make our own Christmas characters. Start by tracing the head and body, use a pencil so the lines can be rubbed away later if needed.

Add hair, clothes and any accessories you wish then go over the final lines with a dark pen. I’ve kept this one simple, but you may find you need to rub out some lines as you go if you use a lot of accessories.

Don’t forget to add your own touches like a mouth and arms, then rub out any remaining pencil marks.

Add some colour and name your character. What part did your character play in the Christmas story, the innkeeper (house owner), a relative, a shepherd, a servant..?

Alternatively use this as a paper doll by cutting each shape out and placing them on the character.

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Games for this (invisible) Innkeeper lesson are based on historical activities, the theme of welcoming and how we use our space. While you may have traditional Christmas games you wish to use instead these games are deliberately trying to break that mould.

Stubborn mules – For this game you’ll need some small bells or a Christmas decoration that jingles when moved and a bowl of sweets. Talk about how when lots of people are in a small space it gets hot quickly. Explain that during the winter months many families used to bring the animals inside to help everyone keep warm. However tonight the house is full of guests so the animals can’t enter, but one mule is really stubborn and wants inside… have the kids lay on the floor and pretend to sleep, the mule with the bells attached must sneak around the sleeping kids to the sweets. the children can’t move off the floor but can wriggle and stretch their limbs. if they touch the mule then they must lead the mule away from the sleeping people and can become the mule themselves. once the game is established you can increase the number of animals!
 

OR

Invitation – Explain to the kids that staying in an inn would have been insulting to the extended family that Joseph had in Bethlehem, even if an inn may have been more comfortable. Talk about times when we are invited to do things out of obligation, invites that can’t be refused. Print the following page, separate and place in a hat or bag. In this game each child be be invited to do something they can’t refuse. Have a child volunteer to select an ‘invitation’ and complete the task – have everyone copy if suitable and to ease embarrassment.
 

Taarp – This is a traditional bedouin game from Jordan, and could easily have been a game Jesus was familiar with. The game needs 2 short sticks split lengthways (4 pieces) to play. The sticks are thrown or dropped onto the floor using one hand and score points according to how they land. If they land flat side up they score 1 point – so if all 4 land flat side up you get 4. However, if all 4 sticks fall flat side down you get 6 points. you can draw a counting grid to score or choose a total to reach. If you can’t source sticks then this could work with rulers or other stick like objects.
This game comes from the BBC travel show about Jordan.
 

Straw search – This simple activity is basically a treasure hunt through straw or an alternative. Hide the various characters from Christmas in a big container filled with star or shredded paper. If you want a printout try THIS – it doesn’t matter about multiples. Talk about what is missing, what other Christmas characters could be added to this image.
 

Sardines – Sometimes traditional games work really well and this reverse hide and seek game where everyone needs to seek the first ‘hider’ and join them ties into the idea of welcoming, gathering and lack of space!

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Here are the images you need for the hero’s attributes linked to The (invisible) Innkeeper.
Each hero set contains a high quality graphic of the character, a take home bible card and a colouring page.

The images are displayed small here, click on the image you wish to have, then save the image that loads.
(Please note : these images have no watermark but are not copyright free, they are only intended for classroom use.)

English

Alternative Graphics

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This invisible innkeeper lesson is all about understanding the context of Jesus’s birth and this craft really helps us see how the houses would have looked. This is a versatile craft that could be used for lots of lessons. For reference : Generally there are three main designs. The bigger houses had rooms surrounding an open courtyard but the more common home was either like I’ve featured or the same design with the ‘guest room’ on ground level behind the main room.

Print out one page per child onto thin card, or back onto cereal box card. You will also need scissors, paper glue and 6 craft sticks (lolly sticks) per house. Please note, there are no instructions on the pdf. You may find it easier to remove the small shapes with a craft knife. For printing in Colour PDF – 1 page For printing with NO Colour PDF – 1 page

Cut out every shape, ending up with 7 pieces. To make this craft a lot faster remove the small windows and support holes in advance.

The slits that join the building are much wider than needed, if working on unbacked printer card just make a single cut down the middle of the rectangle shape.

This is how the front and back wall should look once you have finished cutting them.

This is how the two sides should look once all extra bits have been removed.

The walls slide together, it’s easier if you attach the back to the sides first making sure the support holes are nearest the back.

Stand up the three sides of your house. If you wish you can add the final wall now but I’ve left mine off so you can more easily see what I’m doing.

Take 3 craft sticks and push through the support holes to make a platform.

Find your ladder and platform piece. Fold the tabs as shown.

Adding a small amount of glue onto the tabs, attach the ladder and stick the platform / guestroom in place.

If you’ve not done so already add the front wall and then the 3 remaining craft sticks for the roof. the roof piece lays on top of this.

Your craft is complete. This animated image gives you a brief look around. You may want to use some liquid glue to attach the roof and glue onto a base alternatively the finished piece is easily deconstructed for reassembly later. The finished house would have been about 7 and a half meters or 24 foot wide. Talk to the kids about why the house may have been limited to this width, and what it may have been like to live inside.

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I wonder how well you know the Christmas story, I wonder if you’ve ever dressed up as the characters or coloured pictures of the baby Jesus… you probably know the story really well. But sometimes, we tell stories so often we forget the original.

In the story of Cinderella what did the sisters look like – ugly? Nope. In the original the sisters were beautiful but had ugly hearts. The Christmas story is a bit like that. We know there was no guest room for Mary and Joseph to stay in… and that’s where people get the character of an innkeeper, but… there probably wasn’t an innkeeper!

To understand this we need to go back and look at some of the houses that people lived in when Jesus was born and the kind of things people did.

The bible tells us Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem because that’s where Joseph’s family came from. I wonder if you have relatives that live in a different town or city. Joseph would have gone to stay with his relatives. When you went to visit relatives you stayed with them, it would have been very rude for Joseph to go and stay in an inn. So lets call this relative Tahan.

Tahan hears about the census and knows that means lots of family will come back to Bethlehem. All the family who still live in Bethlehem get together to decide where everyone will stay. Perhaps some of the family are richer and offer to take more guests, perhaps they have bigger houses with courtyards, Tahan hasn’t got a big house. The people in bigger houses take the more important guests, everyone wants to have the more important guests.

Then someone mentions Joseph. The room goes quiet. Nobody wanted to offer their house to Joseph. Joseph married a pregnant girl. People in Bethlehem all those years ago though being pregnant before you were married was a terrible thing. Do you remember that when Joseph had discovered Mary was pregnant he too had thought about leaving her, but an angel had told him that he should marry Mary. Tahan knows they already have enough people to fill their guest room but Joseph and Mary are still welcome to stay with them.

So the day comes and Joseph and Mary arrive, Mary is huge, her belly holding a wriggling baby. Just about every house looks the same in Bethlehem, like a cube with a few windows and a door. There is a little gated area outside that the animals move about in and the household animals are wandering around in the fresh air. When it gets cold the animals are brought inside for the night but there won’t be space tonight. Luckily it’s warm, the kind of night shepherds stay out in the fields rather than come back to town. I wonder if Joseph had been there before? Tahan opens the door and welcomes them into his home.

Inside, big wooden beams go across half of the room making a platform, and a small set of steps sit in the middle of one side wall. Upstairs is called the guest room, it’s where the lamps are lit because from there they give light to the whole house. Usually Tahan and his family sleep up there, but it’s full with guests tonight so the family will sleep downstairs. Tahan doesn’t mind, he sometimes sleeps downstairs in the winter when the animals come in, the animals help keep him warm.

Tahan apologises to Joseph and Mary that they won’t be in the guest room, but offers them warm blankets and soft straw beds. Mary probably woke the whole house giving birth to baby Jesus. And when Jesus is born where should he go? At the end of the room are two small hollows filled with soft straws for the animals food, so the newborn baby is laid into this soft protecting shape, where it can shelter and sleep. Perhaps we think Tahan silly for not recognising Jesus was the most important guest he’d ever host, even when a load of shepherds turned up with stories about angels filling the sky. What a big blunder to make. But perhaps, this was all of God’s big plan? Perhaps Jesus was better in a manger, open for the world to see, than up in a guest room? What do you think?

Today’s hero is the invisible innkeeper because he shows us the gift of a blunder.
 

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