Two to a Manger

The child was not a particularly good child, nor was she particularly bad. She was a normal child. And she was the focus of my attention while she unwrapped her presents on Christmas morning.

She tore into them with a speed and ferocity that was a little unnerving. There was a veritable mountain of parcels for her to get through. When each parcel had been summarily demolished and its contents extracted, the crumpled wrapping paper was chucked over her left shoulder. Her presents ended up over her right shoulder. I saw my wife wince as the present she had so carefully and lovingly selected was summarily dismissed.

As we continued on our Christmas morning calls we determined to learn lessons about the preferences of the modern child. But it was not her ingratitude that I found hard to forgive her for. It was for making me feel very, very old.

The threadbare realities of the immediate postwar world was very different from our own. My father’s income did not permit us to live particularly high on the (meatless) hog, even at Christmas. Our parents told us that they had had to make do with “a stocking with a few oranges and nuts,” and that we should think ourselves lucky. And we did. We had a pillowcase full of parcels.

Gratitude is only one of the many Christmas casualties from the affluence of the past 30 years. There’s also homemade entertainment, not to mention Christmas puddings, mince pies—all sacrificed to the supremacy of the Supermarket and the anesthesia of television.

But back to gifts.

The following story happened in gangster-ridden Russia in the years following the collapse of Communism.

Two American church leaders were invited by the Russian Department of Education to teach Christian values in state schools and orphanages. In an orphanage with children who had been abused and abandoned, an American church leader told the Christmas story. From the drop-jawed silence of the children who gathered around, he correctly assumed that this was a story they had never heard before.

The story had its usual features: Mary and Joseph, no room at the inn, and the Baby in the manger. The children pressed forward, urgent to hear every detail. The church leader decided to harness the imaginations of the orphans by giving them some practical work based on it. They were given squares of colored cards and flannel and told to use scissors and paste to recreate the Nativity scene.

The church leader went around inspecting their creations.

“Boy!” he exclaimed. “I’ve had a very attentive audience!”...er...but what’s this?” he asked, bewildered. He had just come across 6-year-old Misha’s finished project. It was great—except there were two cut-out babies in the manger!

The church leader called for a translator and quizzed Misha. “Why two babies?” The 6-year-old folded his arms, beamed at his project, and began to retell the Christmas story. For a little boy who had heard the story only once, he told it very well. Until, that is, he reached the place where Mary put the Baby in the manger. It was then that Misha began to improvise: “And when Mary laid the Baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and said, ‘Do you have any place to stay?’ and when I told Him I had no mamma and no papa and no place to stay He said, ‘Come and stay with me.’”

Misha had told Jesus, “No. I can’t. I have no gift for You.” But then it had occurred to him that, in a manger out the cold, the Baby could have used some human warmth, and had asked if the warmth of his company would be an appropriate gift.

“And Jesus told me,” Misha went on, “’If you keep Me warm, that will be the best gift anybody ever gave Me.’ So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and He told me I could stay with Him—for always.” As Misha concluded his story his eyes brimmed full of tears.

Misha had found someone who would never abandon or abuse him. Even more, He had illuminated the reason for the Christmas season, and the only acceptable gift we can give in response.