Wooden Nativity Scene – Triptych

Full of sacredness and sincere hopes, Christmas symbolizes the purity and spirituality that the coming of Jesus Christ brings. Many canonical and apocryphal texts about the birth of the Son of God have survived.
Thinking about them, people for two millennia, each in their own way, have shown respect for Jesus – in prayer,
songs or ritual actions. Among them is the tradition of setting up a shopka – a composition of the Nativity of Christ.

Depending on the country, “shopka” has different names. This word, like the tradition itself, migrated to the Ukrainian language
from Poland. Initially, it was placed from the Nativity of Christ to the Meeting of the Lord in churches, but later miniatures of the Bethlehem stable appeared in the homes of wealthy Ukrainian families. Outwardly, the nativity scenes resemble a nativity scene box or a hut depicting the night when the Savior was born. In the territories of Ukraine, they began to be mass-produced in the 20th century from wood, clay, and paper. Currently, the largest nativity scene is installed in the Church of St. Peter the Apostle, which is located in Ternopil, the heart of the Koza Dereza ethno-workshop. The composition, 40 meters wide and 20 meters high, was included in the Ukrainian Book of Records and includes dozens of figures of animals and biblical characters.