Away in a manger . . . enter the dragon

“IT’S what Christmas is all about,” a current TV ad triumphantly declares, offering a cut-price mega screen, HD, DVD, LED, CND (?) telly. That’s sadly true in many quarters. It’s been a long time since I led the choir into St Martin’s in the Fields, Trafalgar Square with my boy treble first verse of Once in Royal David’s City, but, call me oldfashioned, I still prefer my season of goodwill to be marked by carols and the sonorous re-telling of that great old story.

We heard the old favourites again in St Andrew’s, Girne, last Sunday, with the traditional Service of Nine Lessons and Carols. The little plaster models were in place to represent the key figures of the Nativity; Mary and Joseph, the Christ-child, the angels, the shepherds . . . and the animals.

That got me thinking. No manger scene is complete without an ox and an ass. There also need to be sheep, of course, and there can be horses and cows, sometimes even mice and birds. Christina Rossetti’s beloved In the Bleak Mid-Winter, goes further, placing a camel in the zoological mix.

Much as we may love the idea of the birds and the beasts paying homage, even the previous Pope, Benedict XVI, admitted: “In the Gospels there is no mention of animals.”

It is Away in a Manger that gives us those cattle lowing. In Little Drummer Boy they miraculously keep time with the young percussionist. (Although I have always felt a kid banging a drum is the last thing a newborn and its shattered young mother would need!) The Little Donkey gets a song of his own — but plays a more poignant and acknowledged part much later in the story.

All of our stable imagery actually comes from just one of the “official” Gospels: Luke. He gives us the account of the long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem — and the visit of the shepherds. But, shock, horror, Mary did not ride to Bethlehem on a donkey. Nowhere in any Gospel does it say that Mary did anything but walk. The whole journey is given in three lines: Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem and while they were there, she went into labour. No