One sunken heart

Myer Christmas windows nativity display

Myer Melbourne's Christmas windows have been an annual ficture since 1955. This year's display was based on the children's book, Little Dog and the Christmas Wish, by Corrine Fenton. This book is set in Melbourne, and all of the window displays were based on various Melbourne locations. John Deeks, Channel 7's venerable voice over announcer, provided a recorded narration. As a parochial Melbournian, I liked all of those touches.

As a nod to the true meaning of Christmas, Myer always puts a nativity scene at the end of the display. Marshalls were required to provide crowd control so that people queued up and filed past the windows in an orderly manner.

My heart sank when I saw that the nativity display seemed to be the only window that didn't have a crowd around it. I wonder how many families skipped looking at that window altogether. Now that the singing of Christmas carols has been banned in government schools, it's going to become more difficult for kids to hear about the true meaning of Christmas.