Jesus Colored Yarn?

I had the weirdest shopping list for a while: I was on a quest for Jesus-Colored-Yarn. Each store I stopped into over several weeks, I would peruse their craft aisle, or several yarn aisles, all in the name of Baby Jesus’ sweetly colored skin.

I can’t be the only one who had paintings around church growing up with pale-skinned Jesus, his hair a golden brunette with streaks of blonde hilights. Maybe he’s sitting in a grassy meadow, with a herd of lambs surrounding him, with that glimmering, white skin, that was just a shade lighter than the fuzzy baby lambs?

If you search “crochet nativity” you’ll see white skinned characters. We were once gifted a set, and yep, you guessed it! White skinned Mary, white skinned Jesus, white skinned Joseph, and all the magi just as pale.

Now, I don’t have a problem with white-skinned people. I am in fact a white skinned person. What I’m trying to point out here, is that so quickly do white skinned representations knock out the history that we need to remember. Jesus was in fact a Middle Eastern man, a Jewish man, a refugee.

I’ve had in my mind that I’ve wanted to create a nativity scene for a while. Partly to replace the pale-skinned set we were gifted many years ago, but also to have something my kids could pick up without fear of it breaking, and that could easily be moved, and discussed, and most importantly: that the characters weren’t given the Let’s Make Everyone White Filter that happens so casually.

A Dutch artist, Bas Uterwijk, did an artificial intelligence rendering of what Jesus could look like, and it captivated me. You can see some of his featured work here for that project, and scroll a little ways down to find his depiction of Jesus. It’s pretty cool. Make note that he has a medium tan skin with an olive tone to it.

After making my best guess of yarn shades, I got to work. Using Michigan cherry pits as a stuffing source, wooden balls and beads as head piece bases, and my collection of cotton yarns I ultimately found online, I created simple yet sturdy figures as part of a nativity scene. I also wanted an elevated star to show the story of the three magi seeking out baby Jesus by its light, and so made a wooden stand for the star to rest upon as it guided them.

This entire project has really created great conversations with my kids, as well as when I’ve described the idea to friends. It’s so easy to find white-skinned people represented. So easy, that often times we reimagine people of our history as being your standard White, European descended people. And with Jesus being such an important figure – both as a human and God within him – it’s even more important to remember where he came from, a babe born in the animal’s keep because the inn was too full when so many had to travel to be counted for a census. A young, pregnant mother making that journey, an uncertain husband encouraged by an angel that his step-child would be more than a human child, and three travelers led to meet him by a guiding star.

Jesus wasn’t a flag waving American, pale-skinned, and first row in the pews. He was a humble man traveling with fishermen, speaking to the sick, the hungry, the poor, the outcast, and challenging religious leaders, eventually executed by the law.

What are your thoughts? Have your eyes been opened to the Whiteness Filter that is so often applied? Have you told the story of Jesus’ birth, while also talking about skin color, and culture, and all of those necessary details? I hope this is thought provoking for you. I hope it is a challenge to look further and deeper and see how important representation in all facets of our lives is: community, school, faith, neighbors, voting, family, friends, history…. the list goes on and on.

I’ll have ten of these nativity sets available this Friday, November 27th in my Etsy shop at 10:30am EST.

If you grab one, great! If you already have your own nativity and way of talking about Jesus’ birth and life, great! If this post simply gets you thinking about Jesus’ beautiful honey-toned skin, then I have met my goal for this project.

Hang in there, friends, as we finish out the final months of 2020. We’ve been doing hard things, and let us be reminded of the strength we’ve drawn instead of the weakness we have felt.

~Maggie