Guest list may be smaller, but gratitude remains

The headless saint. This is where gratitude starts.

Back at South Ozone Park, Nurse Vivian didn’t decorate for Thanksgiving and skipped straight into Christmas with snowmen made of drycleaning bags and stockings sewn in felts and sequins.

She had purchased a manger scene at Woolworth’s in Johnstown, Pa. She set it up on top of the Zenith color television, so that during commercials and at halftime, the family could contemplate the Christmas miracle.

One year, the shepherd went missing. We never solved that mystery, though I’ve always suspected Brother X.

But it never bothered Nurse Vivian, who used to say, “The shepherd was a bit player. Things go missing. That’s how family works.”

I’m not unlike Nurse Vivian. We don’t have Thanksgiving decorations ( except for the faux turkeys), so November is dedicated to Brian setting up his Christmas village ( technically, with 130 buildings, it’s a Christmas megalopolis) while I set up sheep and oxen.

We’ve got more nativity scenes than any other family in the outer, outer, outer, outer Excelsior: One’s made of straw, carved in wood. Another’s made of pewter. In fact, we’re running out of room at the inn.

We even got one outside: a blowup mold that lights up, the pageant of the electric virgin. John, foster father to the roof cow, suggested that the outdoor manger should feature two Josephs, no Mary and a disco ball for the Star of Bethlehem, but we’re trying not to get kicked out of the neighborhood.

But the crèche de résistance is in the dining room china cabinet. Brian’s not a Woolworth’s kind of husband, so we set up a Swarovski nativity: Austrian crystal depicting the lowly manger.

This year, there won’t be holiday gatherings. Brian and I wondered whether it was worth it to drag the cartons out of the basement and decorate a bungalow that only the Fisher -Paulsons would see. But in the end, we reasoned, the boys seeing it was enough.

In fact, Zane and Aidan carried up the boxes. I unpacked and arranged angels and sheep. Mary stage right, Joseph stage left, with the Magi hovering near the proscenium. But Melchior wouldn’t stand up straight, so as I stood him up yet again, I clipped Joseph with my sweatshirt.

He tumbled to the floor and lost his head, looking a lot more like John the Baptist after his date with Salome than he did a carpenter on vacation in Bethlehem.

I cursed myself out ( en francais) because even though Nurse Vivian wouldn’t mind the loss of a shepherd, Joseph was central to the Bethlehem stable.

You’d think the Bedlam Blue Bungalow would have an extra foster father lying around, but there’s never a good saint when you need one. Brian looked me right in the eye and added, “And we’re even shorter on wise men.”

The bright side? It was clumsiness, not malice, that decapitated the foster father of God. Not Queenie teething. Not Zane’s tantrum.

The saint lost his head. But none of us have. And that is our Thanksgiving miracle.

It’s a smaller group around the table this year. We love Uncle Jon, Aunt Dee and Uncle Howard, Jill and Sarah, Deirdre, but the responsible thing is to make a smaller turkey and bake a few less pies.

It’s what we do in a tough year: the age of the COVID19 pandemic, the isolation, social unrest, homelessness and fires sparked by lightning strikes.

But when we sit down to table, hold hands and say grace, that’s not what we’re thinking about. This year’s lesson is to find the blessing in being together.

It’s as simple as this: Avoid being ungrateful for what you don’t have. Be grateful for what you do have, no matter how small. Even when we are eclipsed, standing in the darkness, we see that at the edge there is light.