Nativity

The fastest way for me to drive Tim bananas during the Christmas season is to start looking to buy a Nativity scene. I’ve never found one that meets all my criteria—not too cheesy, not too dull, not too breakable. That, plus my insistence that Jesus and family must not be white dudes (because they weren’t), rules out pretty much everything at the mall.

Tim insists that I’m getting a little cynical, and I suppose he’s right. I can enjoy and appreciate plenty of Nativities that don’t follow any of my rules. My mom’s is delicate and ornate and takes up an entire table, but I love how it emphasizes the beauty and majesty of the Christmas scene. And I do appreciate that Nativities tend to reflect the cultures in which they’re made—even if that culture turns Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus into friendly emperor penguins. (A little sacrilegious? Mayyybe, but there’s sweetness in it.)

Even when I find one that’s just about right—like this one my dad won from Hallmark last year (my parents are really good at winning raffles)—I don’t get it. I’ve decided it’s because I love the Nativity of my imagination too much.

It started when I was a teenager and first learned that Mary was probably a young teenager too, and that added a layer of fear to the scene. But the more I read the Bible stories of Mary’s responses to the angel who told her what was happening and to her relatives when she told them the news, I saw her strength and courage, her resistance to a culture that said she should be rejected, humiliated, maybe even stoned to death for being an unmarried pregnant woman (and a crazy one at that, with all that God-conceived-this-baby business).

Then, when I became a mother, Mary became something even more. All those beatific, skinny Marys in the crèche scenes? No way. Woman just had a baby! She was exhausted, exhilarated, and crazy hungry. And while she recognized the divinity of her child, surely she was enveloped in his humanity then. My Mary isn’t kneeling and praying by the manger in my scene—she’s curled over that manger with Jesus’ little hand wrapped around her finger. (And she’s wondering when Joseph’s going to get her a sandwich. Or whatever the equivalent of a sandwich was back then.)

The stable and manger are another story. What we translate as “stable” some scholars say was a cave. If a barn full of animals is dank, rank, and dark, a cave must be a thousand times worse. Then there’s the animals themselves—I do tend to like the image of the friendly animals. I love that my 3-year-old thinks that geese lined Jesus’ crib with feathers and oxen lowed him to sleep. Probably, though, the animals were frightened by the unfamiliar sounds and smells in their shelter. Some may have been curious, some indifferent, some in the way. (Sheep. Sheep are dumb.) But the animals weren’t in on the party.

Now, how Joseph and Mary ended up in the stable/cave/thing is a story I’d always taken for granted: no room in the inn. But a friend of mine brought it to new light a few weeks ago with the insight that some translators say “inn” is more properly insula, referring not to a place for travelers, but to a sort of apartment complex, particularly for a family. The inn they were rejected from was essentially Joseph’s cousin’s house. Or his grandma’s house. This makes sense—if everyone was traveling to their hometowns for the census, Joseph must have had relatives in Bethlehem and others visiting. That he and Mary ended up with the animals was deep rejection. Taking it must have been painful, but again took courage. Joseph is mostly a prop with a shepherd’s crook in so many manger scenes, but the guy was incredible—loyal, steadfast, able to cope with a lot of hostility toward him and his pregnant fiancee. Before Joseph is told by a messenger of God to marry Mary and raise the child, he has in mind “to divorce her quietly,” and that alone is revolutionary when he could have had her killed. And then he trusted a vision of an angel.

So now we’ve got two scared, tired, poor, rebellious kids in a cave with a bunch of confused cows. And then there’s Jesus.

I’m writing this with my little guy wiggling on the floor beside me. And Danny was my Christmas present last year—an unexpected baby, and you’ll hear that story in a few days. But what he and his brother get me thinking at this time of year is how incredible God’s statement in the Nativity really is. Jesus wasn’t born with a halo around his head. “Away in a Manger” is one of my favorite Christmas songs, but that line, “Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes”? I don’t buy it.

Jesus cried. He tried to wiggle out of his swaddling clothes and then cried when he realized he was unswaddled. He cried because he was hungry, and Mary breastfed him. (I’ll give Mary a little supernatural patience and assume she was way less cranky with Jesus than I am with Danny when he wants to nurse at midnight, and two, and four, and six.) He was a baby—a tiny, vulnerable, wrinkly, slimy newborn. And it’s awesome. That name Emmanuel, God with us, isn’t just talking about power or divinity coming down to earth. It’s about God fully embracing humanity.

And that’s why I can’t find a Nativity scene. (I’ve thought about attempting it out of paper mache … but no.) Nothing’s human enough, and the human aspect is what I need, what I love. It’s so easy to slip into thinking that our physical humanness is bad, that everything imperfect separates us from God. But the Nativity has dirt and darkness and fear and loneliness and poverty, pain and blood and sweat, weakness and uncertainty. And God says, this is where I’ll join you guys.

Merry Christmas.

(Note: Here's an amazing birth-focused reflection on Nativity that says a lot of things better than I can -- I read it after I wrote this, and I'm a little jealous ...)