Geelong locals are being encouraged to find a series of handmade wisemen, dubbed “The Wise Guys”, in shop windows around Geelong, and collect a star sticker in their nativity “passports” from the shopkeepers for each wiseman they find. Local schools and community groups are also being encouraged to get involved.

Photo from Anglican Media Melbourne.

Elizabeth Breakley, assistant curate at All Saints Anglican in Geelong says the idea came from an event last year in her parish where members of the church made knitted sheep and put them in 30 local shop front windows, with a card to encourage people to find more sheep. Each sheep was named by the shops, and a card was distributed by the church for children who wanted to play the game of finding all the sheep.

“The community got so excited about it, and so on board with it… we doubled our numbers at our Christmas services last year. We wanted to get the true message of Christmas out there, and we encouraged people involved in finding the sheep to come along to church at Christmas.”

With such success last year, the event has been expanded, with a group of 9 churches from the Anglican, Uniting and Catholic denominations getting involved. 120 knitted and sewed wisemen are ready to be put into participating shop windows, made from local church “crafties”.

The churches will also set up a nativity scene photo booth on the weekends leading up to Christmas, encouraging families to get dressed up as characters from the Christmas story, like a shepherd, or an angel, or Mary, and pose for a free digital photo.

Last weekend, the 120 knitted wisemen were laid out in front of Elizabeth’s church congregation, who prayed for the initiative and “sent them out to do their work” of getting people to learn more about the real Christmas story.

http://www.geelongcitynativity.com/