This nativity set, from my recollection of family lore, was purchased by my Aunt Gael, for my grandma Elaine, some time in the early 1960’s. Year after year as a child, helping set it up, and then being responsible for setting it up, was a favorite holiday task. At some point, my brother Joe or I broke at least one shepherd… he’s been glued back together.
All the years that we lived on Ellicott Place, it was displayed on the credenza in the dining room… I would find blue paper, I would put small boxes under to create hills; I recall buying rolls of “snow”, using tulle for hills….
One year, I posed my 3-year old daughter Arlie in a white nightgown, a stuffed baby Mickey Mouse held behind her back, took a black and white photo, cut it out, posed that cut out in the scene and took a photo of the entire scene for a our Christmas card! WAY pre-Photoshop!
Over the last few years, the nativity has moved …first to our apartment on Sharon Ave, then to Virginia…lately, I seems that trees have enveloped them in a forest as I have begun collecting white and softly colored trees.
“In the middle of a forest, there’s a clearing by a stream where a mother hold her newborn and that child begins to dream”….
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…the spirit of the holiday season. Take a few minutes….
In an old city bar
That’s never too far
From the places that gather
The dreams that have been
In the safety of night
With its old neon light
It beckons to strangers
And they always come in
And the snow it was falling
Neon was calling
The music was low
And the night Christmas Eve
And here was the danger
That even with strangers
Inside of this night
It’s easier to believe
Then the door opened wide
And a child came inside
That no one in the bar
Had seen there before
And he asked did we know
That outside in the snow
That someone was lost
Standing outside our door
Then the bartender gazed
Through the smoke and the haze
Through the window and ice
To that corner streetlight
Where standing alone
By a broken pay phone
Was a girl, the child said
Could no longer get home
And the snow it was falling
Neon was calling
Bartender turned and said, “Not that I care
But how would you know this?”
The child said, “I’ve noticed
If one could be home, they’d be already there”
Then the bartender came out, from behind the bar
And in all of his life, was never that far
And he did something else that he thought no one saw
When he took all the cash from the register drawer
Then he followed the child to the girl across the street
And we watched from the bar as they started to speak
Then he called for a cab then he said, “J.F.K.”
Put the girl in the cab and the cab drove away
And we saw in his hand, that the cash was all gone
From the light that she had wished upon
If you want to arrange it
This world you can change it
If we could somehow make this
Christmas thing last
By helping’ a neighbor
Even a stranger
To know who needs help
You need only just ask
Then he looked for the child
But the child wasn’t there
Just the wind and the snow
Waltzing dreams through the air
So he walked back inside
Somehow different, I think
For the rest of the night
No one paid for a drink
And the cynics will say
That some neighborhood kid
Wandered in on some bums
In the world where they hid
But they weren’t there
So they couldn’t see
By an old neon star
On that night, Christmas Eve
When the snow it was falling
And neon was calling
In case you should wonder
In case you should care
Why we on our own
Never went home?
On that night of all nights
We were already there
May your journey be safe, and may you find yourself, tonight, HOME.
My nativity has found a new home this year. It belonged to my grandmother; my brother and I broke the ears off more than one of the animals and the shepherd has a pretty shoddy patch job after a fall, oh, 35 years ago. For decades it adorned the dining room credenza, and for the past 12 years the entire scene was crowded onto the top of a small encyclopedia bookshelf that belonged to my great grandmother.
This Christmas, however, the nativity, and all the little additions I have added over the years, have found a new home on this lovely chest of drawers that my hubby gave me for Christmas! (next to the neighboring subdivision of Snowmen).
More Notes From the Refrigerator Door 