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Nativity Scenes - OFF THE PAGE WITH RAYMOND ATKINS
Nativity Scenes
My family is rough on Christmas paraphernalia. I suppose this is due to the gaiety of the season, the fragility of Yuletide ornamentation, and the destructive tendencies of four children and a double handful of dogs. My wife thinks that the house we live in is the culprit. We live in a very old and very large dwelling, and her theory is that something about the twelve-foot ceilings makes children run and holler, slash and burn. And she may be right. Over the years, I have seen many youngsters lose all control upon crossing the threshold. But whatever the reason, we have in our time purchased miles of Christmas lights, boxes of ornaments, several tree-toppers, uncounted Santas, five tree stands, four door wreaths, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree. And we are the major Southeastern consumer of nativity scenes.
Our first one was a modest affair, purchased at Walmart for $9.95. It contained a combination Mary and Joseph, a baby Jesus, a cow, a shepherd, an angel, and just one wise man (we never did learn where Gaspar and Balthasar had
wandered to). All of these figurines—manufactured from a priceless Hong Kong glass-like shiny substance—were nestled in a plywood stable, looking with adoration at the miracle of the birth of Christ. It was a nice little set, and it lasted two years.
On the fateful Christmas Eve when our first nativity scene took early retirement, it was sitting on the hall table minding its own business when in rushed our oldest child with some rowdy cousins and wiped it out. Sacred figures flew everywhere, the stable became kindling as it struck the wall, and when the damage was tallied, what we had left was a cow with one horn, an angel with no wings, and baby Jesus, miraculously unscathed. We carefully wrapped these remnants of the catastrophe and placed them out of harm’s way.
Early in the subsequent Christmas season, we purchased a replacement nativity scene. This one was a bit nicer than the first, with the members of the ensemble formed in porcelain. The stable was made from small planks and looked like a miniature farm building rather than a three-sided plywood box. Mary and Joseph were separate figures—a vast improvement over the Siamese holy parents of the previous year’s model—and baby Jesus had a little halo over his head. Additionally, there were three wise men, two angels, one shepherd with a lamb on his shoulders and another with a staff, a camel, and the ubiquitous cow.
We set them up on the table in the front hall, warned the children that they were just as breakable as the previous occupants of that table had been, and went on about our decorating business. Later in the evening as I was bound for the front door with the wreath, I noticed that some additional figures had somehow made the pilgrimage to the manger. There, amongst the porcelain majesty of our new nativity members, were a shiny cow with one horn, an injured but still game angel, and the unharmed baby Jesus, tucked in next to his brother. I called my wife out to the hall.
“Mary has had twins,” I told her.
“And that angel needs a doctor,” she replied. The angel did look like she had seen better millennia.
It turned out that our youngest son, then five, had placed the additional visitors at the stable. It was also apparent that he was resistant to the general idea of ringing out the old and ringing in the new.
“Honey, we have the new Mary and Jesus set,” his mama told him. “We’ll just keep these other pieces wrapped up as keepsakes.” She began to reach for the crippled cow.
“Jesus told me that he wanted out of the box,” the boy stubbornly replied. “He said that the cow and the angel wanted to come, too.”
My wife and I exchanged glances. She raised her eyebrow and I shrugged. Who were we to say? Standing before us could have been the Joan of Arc of Northwest Georgia. So the additions became permanent, and they were joined the following year by a small Santa Claus candle, which was slid in two days before Christmas by our three-year-old.
“Santa has come to Bethlehem,” I noted to my wife. He did not look out of place up in the loft of the stable, exactly, but that little wick sticking out of his head was driving me crazy.
“The baby put him there,” she replied. “She said that Santa came to all the good children’s houses.”
“If this keeps up, we’re going to need a bigger table,” I pointed out, but St. Nick stayed—minus the wick, which I snipped off with the wire cutters—and we kept that nativity set for another three years. During that time, the assemblage at the manger grew by five. We gained Frosty the Snowman (because the baby thought Santa was lonesome for someone from home), the Star Wars action figure known as Lando Calrissian (because there were no Black people), and three small owls. (I had quit asking by the time they landed on the stable roof. Maybe they belonged to the wise men.)
So, it was an eclectic group sitting unsuspectingly on the Hall Table of Doom on that cold night in December of 1995 when I backed in the front door with a large cardboard box full of unassembled bicycle. Before I realized it, I had tripped over the table and had fallen upon the nativity scene. The response from my family was immediate and heartwarming.
“This is a mess,” said my wife.
“Daddy fell on Jesus!” said the baby, now six.
“I hope you didn’t kill Frosty,” said one son, now nine.
“Dad’s in trouble,” said the oldest daughter, now twelve.
“Whoa, who’s the bike for?” said the oldest son, now thirteen.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay,” I said from the rubble.
Once we cleaned up the mess and lined up the survivors, the incident officially qualified as a disaster of Biblical proportions. From the porcelain set, Mary and Joseph were broken beyond repair, as were two of the wise men, the shepherd with the lamb, and one of the angels. The list of the wounded included the camel minus his hump, the other shepherd with a broken staff, a wise man missing his gift (and his hands), the cow—short both horns now—and the other angel, short one halo but still angelic. And the babies Jesus? We found them unscathed among the carnage.
The following year, right after Thanksgiving, my wife and I went out to buy another replacement nativity scene.
“We ought to get one with the figures made of wood,” I suggested.
“Do you want the house to burn down?” was her reply.
“Stone?” I asked.
“Earthquake,” she responded.
We settled on a set made of the new wonder material, resin. This was our most ambitious collection yet, and its official members included Mary, Joseph, Jesus, the donkey they rode in on, the three wise men, four angels, three lambs, another cow, two shepherds, and the little drummer boy. They all reside in and around a well-made stable complete with a loft, faux straw on the floor, and a roof that looks like it would actually keep the rain out. But what makes this group really special is its unofficial members, and the roots that spread from that hall table down through the history of my family. Without these, this nativity scene would be just another decoration, a pile of resin waiting for the next sandal to drop.
So there they all stand for a month each year, immobile, silent reminders of the important components of life—love, family, kindness, acceptance, forgiveness, grace. They are Mary, Joseph, three babes wrapped in swaddling clothes, four wise men, six angels, three shepherds, a little drummer boy, Lando Calrissian, Santa, three cows, three lambs, Frosty the Snowman, the humpless camel, the donkey, and three little owls.
Have we finished having nativity incidents? I seriously doubt it. The children are grown now but still prone to running down that hall, I am still clumsy, and now there are grandchildren to contend with. Will the resin baby Jesus emerge unharmed to join his brothers? I refuse to think otherwise. Will the group in attendance to the Virgin birth continue to grow? I am certain that it will. And my wife and I are proud to have raised a family that welcomes all visitors to the manger.
