I’m on the hunt for a new crib this Christmas. Joseph’s head broke off when I was taking the figures from the safety of their attic storage place year. I tried sticking in back in place, but to no avail. I then tried buying a replacement figure but I would have had to buy a whole set and couldn’t find one I liked enough.
I pressed one of the shepherd’s into service instead, after ruling out any of the Three Wise Men as being too exotic-looking, what with their crowns, fancy cloaks and them bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Mind you the shepherd was a tad incongruous too, with his inscrutable expression and a sheep slung across his shoulders.
I’ve always liked having a crib in the house at Christmas and a good substantial one too. None of those little all-in-one crib and figures jobs for me. I bought the wooden crib itself at a craft fair. Bits and pieces have fallen off it in the years since but, I reasoned, that only made it all the more authentic. It looks draughty and cold, like it was meant to be.
I bought the figures in a big department store in Dublin during a day out. I was taken by them because, as well as the main players, i.e. Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus, there was an angel, two shepherds, the Three Wise men, a cow and two sheep. The Three Wise Men even had a camel. I could create a whole tableau. That’s just what I did every Christmas. Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus were given prime position but after that I changed the others around annually.
Some years the angel was on top of the crib, other times beside it and one year I even suspended him aloft over it, trying to replicate his emergence from the heavens. I’d have the Three Wise Men making their way in a line across the table that held the crib, alternating, year on year, who had the camel, given that there was only the one. One thing remained unchanged though, it’s position in the hall, which I felt to be the best vantage point.
I was passing by it one year when I did a double-take. There, abseiling from the roof of the crib, was an action-hero figure. I looked around to see where my youngest son, then seven, was, but he was nowhere to be seen. He had abandoned Operation Rescue Baby Jesus midway, for some reason.
Another year, when my daughter was young, she decided it was lacking and added a whole menagerie of plastic animals, including pigs, horses and goats. There was even, as I recall, a rather fierce-looking dinosaur looking as if he’d come to eat the baby Jesus rather than admire him.
A couple of years ago the central figure went missing. I looked about and found him upended on the floor, still in his manger. I think the dog swiped him with his tail in passing.
I went to Boston one year near Christmas and saw the most beautiful crib with lovely, large figures. I decided it was the perfect present for my mother whose own crib I deemed to be a bit on the small and plain side. It also justified the expense as I wouldn’t have spent that much on myself.
My mother could be the proud owner, I thought, and I’d drop all the necessary hints to get her to leave it to me when she passed on. I didn’t figure on my aunt getting there first. She had coveted it from the moment she set eyes on it and moved before I did to commandeer it. After all the trouble I’d gone through to haul it home safely, it would never be mine.
I was living in northwestern Ontario for Christmas 1980. I decided to go to Midnight Mass in our local church on Christmas Eve. I left our six-week old son at home with his dad and went alone. It was freezing cold, minus 30 degrees. Such temperatures weren’t uncommon in those parts. Six-month winters were the norm, with snow from October through to April.
It had begun to snow again as I left the house, fresh flakes falling on the driveway that had been cleared just hours earlier. I decided, when I got to the church, to go round the back and in a side door as there wasn’t much time to spare. I was deep in thought when I rounded the corner and pulled up short. There, right in front of me, was Mary leaning in over the crib, Joseph looking out at me and baby Jesus, smiling up me. I blinked, not knowing, for a split second, if the figures were real. They seemed life-like. Was it some kind of pageant being enacted?
Then it dawned on me. It was the church’s life size nativity scene. The stillness of the night, the softly falling snow, the sky full of stars and the light against the night sky had conspired to make me think it was real. I smiled to myself, paused for a closer look and thought, as I looked at Mary’s baby, about my own new baby at home. It’s a lovely memory that has stayed with me.
All these years later, as I write this, I’m searching for new crib figures. I’m fussy you see. I like them to be realistic looking. I don’t like the trend towards cartoonish-looking faces. I have it narrowed down to two. Both are expensive but I’ll justify the cost by planning to leave them to my daughter when I die. Only I’ll make sure to tell her auntie.
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