The Manger
Monday, December 22nd, 2008
In this month marked by magnificent color and houses draped with glorious lights, it’s a humble display a quarter-mile up a country road that brings our children the most delight. Every year the appropriations are set in the same place. The manger scene and its various figures carved from wood are set in the foreground and the flood light placed at just an angle to cast the bodies’ shadows smooth and dark against a broad barn wall backdrop. Though the caricatures of the wisemen and Jesus and his Earthly parents are obviously one-dimensional – their faces and clothing painted in vivid color visible during the day – at night, only their shadows fall as real around them as they might have Christmas night.
The younger children do not yet understand the manger scene or its significance to some. They look forward to passing it on the way to and from nightly errands – usually last-minute present purchases – simply because it’s a bright spectacle. They do not know the story yet, only that baby Jesus’s birth was significant and that a much differerent and older version of him watches down on them from Heaven.
He must be a confusing figure to them, literally thrown at them among a mix of characters each December, with Santa and Rudolph and Frosty, all new to them, all who make their homes in cold weather and receive similar placement in lawn displays visible from rural routes and highways.
By chance this year, they have visited three Santas, sat on his lap and had photos taken three times a piece, and yet each time he has looked different, sounded different, and either worn natural or blatant fake beards with differing costumes. They have been told year-round that Santa is watching them, particularly when they are naughty, and that he delivers presents to houses around the world in a single night (though the tree is almost surrounded by boxes three days before the big day.)
They know the story of the Nutracker. The oldest has seen the ballet. I have no doubt that with the level of imagination they posses, at least one of the three has gone to bed this winter imagining themselves as Clara and the living room transforming into a secret battlefield.
Buried in the Christmas packages, the bows and wrapping ornaments, they see the Nutcracker and mice armies marching in colonial battle lines toward each other. In the 500 twinkling tree lights, all smudged around the edges playing tricks on the eye, whichever child that dreams and the house pets would be the only witnesses to the war waged. The two cats wrapped on the arm chair, the kitten playfully pawing at the other. The old wise dog on the couch, himself not as dead as he as looks but rather weighted in sleep. The lights on the tree blinking almost imperceptibly, giving the impression of light snowfall. The slick-coated bags mirroring the yellow glow.
The tree is the most glorious light in the house and it is visible from the street, tucked back in a far corner by the stairs. Only drivers coming to a halt at the intersection or passers by on foot can see its trimmings.
By contrast, the upstairs is sufficiently dark. Orchestral music plays on the oldest girl’s bedside CD player all night long, set to repeat. In the winter, it plays Christmas songs with soft, gentle renditions so delicate that they could be played in a nursery to put a newborn clueless about the holiday and miracle births to sleep.
Their world at Christmas time is complex and confusing, is shadows and lights, and yet it encourages them to dream and believe, no matter what they come to expect or to see later. For awhile, they believe, and their father hopes that it doesn’t wear off as it does for adults when the lights and wood carvings are taken down in frigid February.
