Setting Up the Nativities

MANGER SCENE
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

La Navidad by Aguijarro

Advent! December! Christmas decorations! It seems like just the other day -- but must have been more like February -- that I was boxing up the ornaments and feeling bereft. Taking down the tree always feels so sad to me, like maybe Christmas will never come again.

I can never do it all at once, so there I was, slowly working my way through the task, when Ellie (age 3 at the time) noticed that some of the holiday tchotchkes had disappeared. She asked me where they had gone, and I started to say that I had put them away because it wasn't Christmas ANYMORE -- but guess what she said?

"Because it isn't Christmas YET!" I loved her perception that, no matter how far away, a happy future Christmas is yet to come, as opposed to my dreary old mourning for the Ghost of Christmas Past! Right?

And lo it has come to pass: that future Christmas, as foretold by Ellie, has now become the present. Almost unbelievably, it is once again time for setting up the Nativities! A few years ago, in addition to our table-top display, I got out some pop-up Nativity books for her to play with . . .

but I had the figures
— kind of like small cardboard paper dolls —
stored separately in a baggie . . .

Ellie was puzzled when she saw that her pop-up creche
was empty: “Hey, where’s the family scene?”

Now she knows what to look for! In 2024,
she inspected my Mary Engelbreit set and announced:
"We have one of these Jesus things at our house!"

Corners

I turn each corner still
hoping for the Virgin Mary to appear
She'll be dressed in cardboard blue
the way she was in Sunday school
and stepping out in front of me
she'll lead me through another town.

Afterward,
her many miracles
still bulging from that shopping bag of hope,
she'll leave me standing by myself and
wondering.

I know that love
like radios and ripe bananas
is auctioned in the market place

and all things meant to last were made
pre-1940.
Still a man can smile while waiting for
the light to change
and hope the Virgin Mary on her busy rounds
will stop to drink strong coffee
on the English Common
or in North Beach square.

Kennedy and King,
you had the means but not the time.
And though the Virgin Mary
is nothing but a dream
her hair is soft and silky in the night. (1968)

Rod Mckuen (1933 - 2015)
found in Twelve Years of Christmas
[More by Rod McKuen]

Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, December 14th

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