The message of Christmas is that the visible material world is bound to the invisible spiritual world.
~Author Unknown
A honk of the mailman’s horn meant something special. Most days Mr. Robert barely slowed as he eased the mail into our box and disappeared around the bend. My sisters and I were fascinated to watch the old man maneuvering his weathered hatchback from the passenger seat—left arm clamped to the wheel, the right deftly stuffing envelopes and small packages into our box, his eyes never leaving the road.
But a toot of his horn signaled something else entirely. It meant a package too big to fit in the box. Since my two brothers left for Vietnam, the packages had been exciting. One brother sent stuffed animals with transistor radios in their bellies. Mine was a purple poodle which I took everywhere with me. The other brother sent eighteen inch-dolls dressed in traditional Vietnamese attire which Mama declared “for the shelf, not the toy box.”
At the sound of the horn, my sister, Michelle, and I scrambled off the front porch and raced each other to the highway. No matter how fast we were, the old man would be incensed at how long we’d taken. Sure enough, by the time I made it to his car, he was handing Michelle a box—that looked like it had been through a battle or two itself—and was off in a huff. I wasn’t old enough to read all the writing but recognized the foreign looking stamps and knew that either Duff or Wayne had sent something mysterious from the other side of the world. With Christmas only months away, my mind reeled with possibilities.
Instead of making Mama happy the way I always expected them to, a package from one of her boys made her quieter than usual. She’d never let us see her cry or even look blue but the same boxes that elated my six sisters and me had the opposite effect on Mama. She read the letter to herself then, with a quiet smile, invited us to, “Go ahead. Open the box.” She didn’t have to ask twice.
The first thing we saw was strange looking newsprint. We fished around in it and pulled out figures of animals—sheep, a donkey, a large brown cow, a camel—and people—kings, shepherds, Mary, Joseph, an angel and the baby Jesus. It was the Holy Family. There was also a primitive barn complete with straw attached to the floor and roof—like the one on the lawn at church, only smaller.
And so began one of my favorite Christmas traditions—one my sisters and I continue with our own kids and grandkids to this day. That night Mama meted out the nativity figures and nestled the empty barn under the Christmas tree. Daddy—a born performer—read the story of the birth of Jesus from the Bible, making it come alive for us.
We girls sat, feet tucked beneath us, nativity figures in our laps. As the story unfolded, we took turns placing each figure in its proper place—first the animals, then Mary and Joseph, the infant King, the angel, shepherds and eventually the wise men who traveled from afar (or in our case, from the coffee table).
After the story was complete, Daddy produced a tape recorder and we took turns recording messages to our brothers which Mama would mail the next morning.
A year later, Duff and Wayne were back with us—they and their young wives and babies—as we reenacted the story again.
Over the years, we shared that tradition with cousins, neighbors and one grandchild after another. As each of us learned to read, Daddy invited us into his lap to take turns reading with him.
I’m not sure how I ended up with the old nativity set. The years (over forty) have taken their toll. The figures are chipped, glued and faded—pretty shabby looking, really. The cow is minus one horn and one sheep disappeared all together. The newspaper with the foreign writing disintegrated decades ago.
Every Christmas Eve though, the kids and I pull out those battered figures and that well-worn stable. Their daddy reads the story to us and the Holy Family makes their annual march to the nativity one more time.
