Solidarity, acceptance, tradition, family are words that are usually associated with the spirit of Christmas. Two traditions encompass them all: the crèche and the Advent dishes. In Cologne, Germany, a crèche is being prepared in the little church of St Mary in Lyskirchen, and for this Christmas 2016 the setting will be very special: not mountains of moss or polystyrene stages, but S17662, a real, fragile wooden boat used by the people smugglers who carry migrants from Libya to Italy and that was seized by the Maltese Military Navy. Previously used as an altar in a church, then as a memorial in Cologne’s Cathedral, now it turns into Bethlehem. “The crèche is a narrative cradle that is changing all the time”, the author of the crèche, Benjamin Marx, says. The characters tell about today’s Cologne: on the refugees’ boat, the Holy Family is surrounded by the drug-addicts who hang around the city’s squares, the seamen who stand for the Three Wise Kings, the city’s symbol, the Eritrean fleeing boy and the policeman, with the Roma girl and the troubled worker. They are ever-changing characters, first 12, now as many as 37: “We are all in the same boat, but in two different worlds”, says Marx, who put in the caroller children’s statues singing the Star as well, because, “if Christ is in the boat, then He can also be born in the boat”.