The Creche

This is a flash memoir about God’s patient sovereignty in a child’s life. The creche I made when I was six will reappear years later in my life with far greater understanding of the gospel.

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After the first snow, there’s a small corrugated box, a pile of Popsicle sticks, a jar full of sawdust, some huge pinecones, a few twigs, and some bark on the kitchen table.  Mommy says we are making a crèche.  I sit beside her as she sets the box on its side and folds the upper flap to make a roof.  She pulls apart the pinecone petals and shows me how to glue them on like shingles.  She opens the side flaps and the box turns into a building with wide open doors.  She tells me to glue the twigs on the doors in the shape of an X.  Now the box looks like Granddaddy’s barn.  Mommy puts glue on the back of the Popsicle sticks, and I press them against the inside walls.  She spreads more Elmer’s on the bottom of the box, and I get to sprinkle sawdust on the floor.  The tree bark goes on the outside walls.

We wash our hands and Mommy zips me into my blue parka before she pulls on her maroon coat with the fur collar and cuffs.  I climb into the back seat of the black Ford station wagon next to Bruce while Mommy reaches into her purse and pulls out a shiny tube.  Glancing in the mirror, she arches each lip with the color of a candy apple.  Her purse snaps shut, and we’re off to the ten-cent store.  

In the center of the five and dime there is a high counter where a short little old lady sits behind a cash register while her little old man wanders the store.  Bruce and I glide along the outside counters fingering the small bins of pink teddy bear erasers, the Mickey Mouse pencil cases, the blunt- tipped scissors, silver jacks, rubber balls, green dice, leather wallets branded with lariats and rearing horses, cap guns, rolls of red caps, balloons, bubbles, balsa wood gliders, Popeye Pez dispensers, Tootsie Roll Pops, all things we can only hope Santa will leave in our stockings.  Mommy is standing by the plastic folded rain hats, miniature sewing kits, darning needles, and crochet hooks when the little old man says, “May I help you?”

“Yes,” Mommy scans the shelves above the bins lined with china figurines: German shepherds, angora kittens, and nursery rhyme characters. “Do you carry nativity figures?”

“Right this way.”  The little old man leads us towards more bins chocked with ten-cent bearded men in red bathrobes, ladies in blue bathrobes and matching head scarves, and babies stuck in troughs like where Granddaddy feeds his cattle.  There are all sorts of animals too.  Mommy says I can pick out a cow, a donkey, and even a camel with a fancy red saddle.  Mommy picks out two of the bearded men.  She says one will be Joseph, the other a shepherd.  One blue lady will be Mary, the mother of the baby stuck in the trough.  Bruce gets to pick out three men dressed like kings.  The purple one carries a golden treasure chest, the green one a basket.  The red king a wooden box.

When we get home the sawdust is dry, so I can put my animals in our little barn.  Mommy puts some of the people in the barn too.  She says the baby is Jesus.  She tells Bruce to put the shepherd and his sheep on one side of the barn and the kings on the other side along with their camel because they have come across a desert to worship him.  She hangs a crocheted angel from the window latch to sing to the shepherd while he watches his little flock.  She tells me this is what Christmas is about, and yet we place the crèche on the stereo where Daddy plays Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, and Bruce and I hang up our stockings.  

Before bed we put out a plate of cookies for Santa and two carrots for his reindeer.

Lying on the carpet in front of the fireplace, in the dark living room, I stare at the Christmas tree lights, and dream up a plan.  After mommy and daddy go to sleep, I will sneak out of my bed and hide beside the couch.  From there, I’m sure to witness Santa coming down the chimney to stuff our stockings.

In the morning, I’m still under the covers, my plan failed.  Yet there is my stocking, the top bulging with a ballerina’s pink tutu.

“Mommy, Daddy, Look! Santa knew just what I wanted.”

They titter and sip their Maxwell House as I squeeze the leotard over my pajamas.

Mommy sets the arm of the record player on the Nutcracker, and I leap onto the coffee table, twirling with joy beside the crèche – waiting patiently on the stereo.  

Waiting for me to figure out that Mommy and Daddy ate Santa’s cookies, that Santa is a fraud, that shepherds are poor, dirty men nobody usually sings to, and having a baby in a barn is gross, desperate, and extraordinary.