Nativity scene rekindles spirit
Childish wonder
Every year I get asked what I want for Christmas. And every year my answer is the same: “Nothing.”
This traditional response is not solely the reflexive byproduct of my lack of any particular use for the holiday season. Nor does it come from a rarefied place of high-minded selflessness. Rather, it stems from the simple fact that I don’t need anything and that
I go ahead and buy the stuff I want. I see no need to give in to the spirit of seasonal acquisitiveness just because it runs rampant throughout the zeitgeist once a year.
On the other hand, my late brother Dave—gone just over a year—loved Christmas. Unlike me, David was a sentimental guy, particularly when it came to the holidays. But unknown to any of us brothers until his passing was that much of his sentimental attachment to Christmas was animated by his cherished childhood memory of the old Nativity scene that was displayed in front of Oak Forest United Methodist Church.
We lived some four houses down from Oak Forest on Fair Park Boulevard in those days. From there, Buck used to walk his young family to the church. The display, representing the movers and shakers back in Bethlehem of Judea on Christmas night, consisted of flat characters constructed of wood. But to Dave they could not have been more beautiful if they had been formed by Michelangelo out of Italian marble.
Like I said, I am not a sentimental man. Nor am I given to magical thinking. But last Christmas—our first without Dave—I drove over to Oak Forest UMC one night for the first time in eons in hopes of seeing the old display. Unfortunately, the front of the church was dark and barren. The old Nativity scene was not there. No surprise. Things change. You really can’t go home again.
Put this in your “small world” file. One of Dave’s high school classmates—as in southwest Little Rock from whence we all expatriated—attends Oak Forest with his brother. Richard sent me an email last week. Attached to it was a picture of the old Nativity scene lit up at night just like it used to be. He told me that they had to slap some new paint on the figures and “rebuild” one of the Wise Men. But Dave’s Nativity scene is up and running.
I hope we can all go over to Oak Forest some night while the kids are here for the holidays. You can never go home again. I know that. But I would like to take my own stumbled-into family to the same place Buck took his during those Christmases long ago when we lived on Fair Park. Where good old Uncle Dave and I once stood when we were little, gazing in childish wonder at the Magi and a Holy Family made of wood. There on a sacred place that, unbeknownst to anyone else, filled Dave’s heart with wonder for the remainder of his days.
The angels have come back. I want to see them again.
I guess I do want something for Christmas after all.