'Gibbonstown Cribbers' raise €650 for LARCC
‘The Gibbonstown Cribbers’ is not a group of unhappy Rochfortbridge residents – but the name a group of neighbours and friends who came together to Christmas to install a crib in the area chose for themselves. “Pinterest has a lot to answer for!” jokes Ceppie Keogh, explaining how the group made the crib, including the figures, from a variety of odds and ends.
“We made them out of bits of timber , we padded out the heads with bags of straw,we painted faces on them and we dressed them up: Guineys knew me from coming in day in day out. We were delighted with the figures.”
The idea for the display started last Christmas: “It was about a year ago when someone said ‘wouldn’t it be nice to have somewhere for the kids to go at Christmas because of Covid – a community thing’, and one of the women suggested that maybe we should make a crib, so in October I started putting out messages in our WhatsApp group,” said Ceppie. “There was me, Mags Fitzsimons, Mary Cleary, Lottie Flanagan and we got Mary and Kate Deegan involved.
“Katie is an art teacher in Rochfortbridge and I thought ‘What better woman to help with this!’ and she brought in her sister Mary; and Mary Cleary had a horse and cart and it sort of snowballed from there into an event. Once we had the figures for the crib, which we made out of timber, the next thing was we had to build a crib around them and we had to take them down to the spot we had earmarked.
“My sister had donated a picket fence to go around the area and my brother and Tom Cleary built the crib; then we put lights on it and we had an old tree from the bog and we put lights on that as well.”
They unveiled the crib on Sunday December 12, the third Sunday of Advent: “We got Fr William Coleman, CC, to come and bless it and we had a visit from Santa and all the kids got selection boxes, and there was a raffle.
“We raised more than €650 for LARCC. We were delighted with the amount we raised.”
Ceppie says the crib is lit up every night and it’s lovely to go down and see it.
“It’s also about bringing a little bit of religion back into our lives when we need it!”