(RNS) — Drive down the Mass Pike, on Route 128 around Boston or over the Bourne Bridge toward Cape Cod, and you’re likely to see billboards touting the ultimate New England Christmas tradition.
The Lobster Nativity set.
Even if you don’t buy one, the billboards will bring a smile to your face, says Chris Alfonso, the 25-year-old entrepreneur who sells the crustacean Christian display.
“And I think in this day and age, we all need something to laugh about,” said Alfonso, who has been selling the set, where all the characters of Christmas — including the baby Jesus — have been transformed into lobster figurines, since 2023.
Rosemary Quantick, an artist based on Cape Cod, first came up with the idea of replacing the manger with a lobster trap in 2019, as a way to pay tribute to her adopted home. “I wanted to create something that was representative of New England, the place that had become my home over the years,”
Quantick told the Cape Cod Times.
The Three Wise Men ornament. (Photo courtesy of Chris Alfonso)
Alfonso, a friend of Quantick, took one look at the first set that Quantick made and told her she should try selling them. He’d interned for a company that helped inventors get their product to market — and thought they could help her. Eventually, Quantick had about 1,000 sets made and began selling them for Christmas in 2020. She sold about 100 that first year, then 100 more the next year. Things took off in 2023, when Alfonso started helping her sell them at a Boston Christmas market. He eventually bought the rights to the sets and started selling them online and at a holiday market.
He got a break last year, when a TikTok video about the sets went viral, and he sold about 2,500 sets.
The current version of the Nativity features the usual suspects, said Alfonso. There’s baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a shepherd, three wise men, a sheep, a camel, a cow and a little drummer boy (“I know he’s not in the original Nativity,” said Alfonso).
All are displayed in a lobster trap that is painted gray and weathered. The whole set sells for about $115 online. There are also Christmas ornaments with the whole Nativity set or just the Holy Family or the wise men . Alfonso, who grew up Catholic, said he gets some mail from folks who think the set is sacrilegious. But most people get the joke — a …