O Come Let Us Adore Him

Don't you love Nativity scenes?

When I was a little girl, my sister and brother and I made a whole set out of salt dough and painted it with tempera paints. Salt dough is a wretched medium to try to create holy dioramas with. As I recall, our figures were shaped rather like flat-bottomed Weeble people. We had a terrible time with their little facial features and decided to fix them with the paint. Tempera paint is a wretched medium to try to repair holy dioramas with. It's bright. It runs like cheap mascara in a humid room. And our Mom loved it, displaying it (to our horror as we hit the junior high years) prominently every year. 

When I was a young, single teacher, one of my students' families made me a tiny Nativity with clothespin dolls on a cottonwood platform. They built the creche with materials they had gathered around their ranch, right down to the lichen hot-glued to the base. Mary and Joseph were robed in felt, and had the most beatific looks drawn with care by young hands, and baby Jesus was tenderly wrapped with soft, white cotton. I cried when I opened it; it was so lovely, all that care for a foolish girl who was learning more from them than they ever would from her. 

When I was a new bride, my husband saw me examining a minescule Nativity in one of those World Market type stores in the mall.  It was the most delicate, perfect little sets that I'd ever seen! All of the figures would fit easily in a grown man's cupped hands...not neatly, but they'd fit.  It was all ivory colored, with darker tones to illuminate the features; simple and elegant.  That Christmas eve, our first together, he surprised me with the little Nativity! I've carefully arranged it every year, astounded that the kings still bear their gifts with no scratches or nicks, and that the shepherd's staff is intact. 

When I became a mother, I wanted a Nativity that my children could hold and feel and arrange. (They aren't quite ready to venture into salt dough territory...)  I found a resin-ish, plastic-ish Nativity scene in the Bible bookstore in Miles City this year.  The tallest of the wise men is about 10 inches in stature, almost Barbie doll height.  They are painted very subtly, in muted blues, soft browns and corals. But then, as though the makers couldn't stand to let them leave the factory with that much elegance, they encrusted them with a clear sort of glitter.  By the light of the tree, they are enchanting! By the light of day, they are border-line gaudy...kind of like women who put on makeup in dark rooms.  Whoa! 

The kids are loving them.  Most days, I find all the wise men, shepherds, Holy family and animals all gathered in a clump around the baby Jesus.  They're all looking in, crammed as close as they can, shoulder to shoulder, robe to robe.  Yesterday, however, it took on a new dimension as the Tyrannasaurus Rex joined the group.  He seemed happy to be there, but there was definitely a menacing presence lurking behind Joseph. We think he was really checking out the lambs, but we can't be too sure. I removed him, but Rex returned, carefully placed in his spot with sticky hands.  (You could tell by the glitter...)

I look forward to the Nativities I'll add, as the years pass.  I'm sure my kids will make some sort of representation and that I'll get tears as I unpack it, annually.  There will be missing lambs, wise men with battered crowns, shepherds that have been given more "detail" and donkeys with the OC brand on their right hip.  And they'll all be beautiful to me, because when I look at them I'll see the people I love and the real meaning of this Holy-day, my Jesus.