MARY, JOSEPH AND THE HUMBLE STABLE

Luky
I was miffed halfway through October when signs of Santa Claus in his sleigh all the way from Lapland started to be displayed. 
  Here we were dying of heat in the Free State Goldfields and there was St. Nick, muffled up to the white bushy eyebrows, circling his whistling whip into the air and calling cheerily: “Ho ho ho.  Come Dancer, Prancer and Vixen!”  
  I hesitate to add the other reindeer names I remember because they are swearwords in Afrikaans. 

I get seriously unhappy when Christmas is preceded by glee so long before the time.
  I'm always afraid theparty will be over before it starts.
  At home it is the same thing.

  The other family members want to put up the Christmas decorations early in December and I fight them tooth and nail until Christmas Eve.

To me, Christmas is the gloom of the bitterly cold late afternoon in Bethlehem.
  Mary, in the final stages of pregnancy, is being jostled uncomfortably on the back of a donkey.    Joseph, staff in hand, leads his precious cargo through the cobbled streets.  

The rich are housed in the comfortable inns, but there is no room for the King of kings.
  Yet there is a wealth of consolation implicit in that most beautiful of true stories.  
  Who would have shown the huMble little couple to the stable?  

Did Joseph feel powerless and guilty for not having been better able to take care of the Son of God?
  Did he fear for the safety and wellbeing of Mary and the Messiah she carried in her womb?  
  Was there clean straw in the stable to provide some warmth?  

I have a mental picture of Joseph, rolling up his sleeves and sweeping out the worst of the straw before burying it outside because of the droppings of the ox and the ass.

Joseph and Mary must have been grateful indeed for the shelter from the falling snowflakes, so picturesque on postcards, yet so cruelly cold in reality.
  When Jesus was born, surely Mary cradled him in her young arms and hugged him?  
  And surely Joseph, his fatherly heart overflowing with tenderness, lovingly caressed the tiny baby’s face with a delicate touch from his carpenter’s hands? 

Would Mary have allowed the rough shepherds to hold the Messiah?
  Despite their poverty, did these manage to bring the little family some much-needed cheese, bread and milk, and perhaps some sheepskins against the bitter cold?

Was there a small fire made in a cleared patch in a corner of the stable, placed well away from the straw, and did the shepherds warm their hands there?  
  Were they able to hear the angel song inside the stable?  
  Were Mary and Joseph embarrassed about the poverty of their surroundings when the three kings arrived?

I have other questions about Christmas more pertinent to today.
  Why do I always feel touched when the first Christmas card arrives in my post box?  
  Why can’t I hear a Christmas carol at Christmastime and retain my composure?  

Why does every human being on God's earth suddenly become important at Christmas, especially the poorest among us?
  Even the very commercialism of Christmas itself brings benefit. 
  The money we spend at Christmas provides jobs for many.  

Mary and Joseph were ordinary people, as we are, and Jesus must have learned at His mother's knee that when Joseph was out of work, they had no food.
  So the advertisement of Jesus' Birth celebrated at Christmas helps to provide many with their family shelter and food.

My father, a baker in Amsterdam, would seldom see his bed in the forty-eight hours preceding Christmas, but the Christmas sales made the extra effort worth while.
  As for my mother, one Christmas Eve, serving the customers, she realized she was about to give birth.  
  She phoned her sisters and a sister-in-law to serve in the shop before contacting the doctor and the midwife.
  Then she went up to the first floor where we lived, and ninety minutes later gave birth to my brother. 

When he was born, she hugged him, handed him to the midwife and swung out of the bed.
  “Hold on!  Where do you think you’re going?” the doctor asked.

“Downstairs to the shop.  My husband’s terribly busy!”

“Don’t you worry about him.  He’ll be all right,” the doctor said.  “You just enjoy your new baby and go to sleep!”

My brother's birthday was always celebrated by us on Christmas Eve.  
  He was a lovely guy, a retired school teacher, was happily married and a father of four.    But he was the most down-to-earth, practical man you could ever wish to meet.  
  Would the circumstances of his birth have had something to do with that?

Despite the hard work before Christmas, my parents took us to church first thing on Christmas day, even if my dad did tend to drop off from exhaustion during the sermon, and my mom had to keep bumping his arm in the middle of a particularly audible snore.

He’d wake up during the carol singing and you could hear his voice – not a particularly melodious one – above all the others during the “Oh come all ye faithful”.  
  Only he sang: “Christus geboren, zingen de engelenkoren!”

The Christmas labours brought their own commercial reward.  
  For three or four months afterwards, our accounts would be up to date and we’d be ahead of the game for a while.

All this, and the Christ Child too.