This year my Nativity will stay dark
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- December 10, 2023
- 689
My Christmas tree is warmly twinkling by the French doors we installed some years back. I fought George on the relocation of the front door for years, and after it finally got moved, I said, ‘Huh, this looks pretty cozy.’ I fight against a lot of things that should happen, thinking my way is the best — that I am right and someone else is wrong. I gave in a lot over the years, but my husband would say I’m more stubborn than a mule. Poor mule.
Last night I unwrapped the pieces of my manger scene, lovingly placing them in an arrangement to my liking. The grandkids are coming over tomorrow while their mama gets a haircut, and I’m expecting the camels to end up somewhere unexpected like a potted plant. I bought this nativity for $12 at a sale in New Towne Mall somewhere around 1993.
I was happy and grief-filled as I thought about that manger scene and not in the way we have reverently been taught to. Bethlehem, where the baby Jesus was born, is located in the occupied West Bank.
“The top leaders of the major Christian denominations in Jerusalem have called on churches in the Holy Land to refrain from organizing any ‘unnecessarily festive’ Advent and Christmas activities in solidarity with the victims of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip,” an article from Christianity Today said.
There will be no tree or joyous festivities in Bethlehem this year as the call for a sober, pared-down Christmas rings through the land. This feels right to me, and while I normally nestle lights in my manger scene, I’m leaving it dark this year to reflect on the whys.
A friend recently sent this to our chat: “The number of events … and lists … and cards that one SHOULD thoughtfully be writing … and all the baking and wrapping … and agonizing over what gifts to buy, what there is time to make … the decorating and extra stuff … and thinking somehow that no matter how hard I try to keep it all straight and create some magical glowing Hallmark moments and memories, something will inevitably be said or done that will be vexing to your core, and you’ll end up snapping at loved ones or going outside for cry breaks.”
She gets it. I do, too. We put so much stress on our shoulders to achieve the perfect Christmas season that we’d rather go outside and cry sometimes. So many in the world who celebrate Christmas, and so many who don’t, are suffering unimaginable horrors this year.
So, while my thrifted Christmas tree adorned with all my best vintage ornaments I’ve gathered over the years is merry and bright, the notion of a stripped-down Christmas — with the weight of a weary world pressing upon me — feels like a solution I didn’t know I needed.
I don’t get a lot of things right, and I mostly rely on intuition. Keeping my Nativity scene bare is a privilege. So is climbing into a warm bed at night with all my limbs intact. Not forgetting we cannot choose where we’re born is the key. I’ll never have to worry about my home splintering around me as I sleep because of the privilege of my birth.
We are the same amount of human as a tiny baby born in a dark manger. We are the same amount of humans as those perishing in distant lands. Those perishing in distant lands are the same amount of humans as us. If we forget our shared humanity, we have already lost the battle. Maybe in chosen darkness, we can find the light.
Melissa Herrera is a published author and opinion columnist. She is a curator of vintage mugs and all things spooky, and her book, “TOÑO LIVES,” can be found at www.tinyurl.com/Tonolives. For inquiries, to purchase her book or anything else on your mind, email her at junkbabe68@gmail.com or find her in the thrift aisles.