Just a simple Nativity-like the original

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Just a simple Nativity-Like the Original
By Dwight A. Moody, Dean of the Chapel, Georgetown College, KY

During the Christmas season of 1973, my wife Jan, and I were living in Jerusalem. Missionary friends there presented us with a simple set of Nativity figures as a holiday gift. This is their story 30 years later.

Not many ornaments made it out of the closet this year, a silent witness to the simplicity that has overtaken our celebration of Christmas.

There is a tree at the front window; but not much of one, my wife says. I offer no apologies: It was the last tree on the lot and even thin and misshapen trees need a place to stand on Christmas morning.

There is also a Nativity set on the table; but again, not much of one. It is now 30 years old, and may well be the only one the two of us will ever own.

It is a shabby set when compared with those that fill public spaces around the world. I viewed one in Pittsburgh recently, a life-size scene set between towers of money and power.

A place in Arlington, Texas, displays a thousand such Christmas scenes. Steyr, Austria, has a Nativity hill with more than 200 figures. One in the Czech Republic features hundreds of moving characters.

The world`s largest, they say, is at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, complete with millions of lights.

It is an old way of telling the Christian story. The catacombs in Rome display crude Nativity scenes carved into the walls more than 1,600 years ago. In 1223, Francis of Assisi organized one of the first outdoor Nativities using live animals.

Living Nativities are very popular. People treasure the opportunity to be shepherds, angels, wise men, and of course, Mary, Joseph and even Jesus. Often these dramas are maintained 24 hours a day, seven days a week, throughout the Advent season.

More recently, the Nativity of Jesus has become the favorite theme for gargantuan pageants, complete with orchestras, animals and flying angels, not to mention a technical support crew.

One church fills a 6,500-seat auditorium no fewer than 13 times, taking in a million dollars in ticket sales.

Such spectacles are a strange contrast to the event they commemorate. Poverty, simplicity and utter anonymity were the order of that first Christmas day. Which is why we stick with our Nativity set.

We were poor and simple students in Israel 30 years ago, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy three. Throughout October we had huddled around candles and radios during the Yom Kippur war. Few classes resumed in November even as we ventured around Jerusalem and the surrounding territories.

On Christmas Eve, we rode our Vespa scooter to East Jerusalem for a meal with missionaries Wayne and Jeanne Buck and their small children. To our surprise, they presented to us a wrapped and ribboned gift. It was an olive wood Nativity set: simple, unadorned, without color or varnish.

Later, we rode south to Shepherd`s Field just west of Bethlehem and joined with hundreds of others in singing carols and reading Scripture. The sky was deep and clear and full of stars.

Our Nativity set, then, reminds us of two special days; the birth of our Lord a long time ago, and the unforgettable night when were young and half a world away.

One shepherd and two sheep remain, plus an animal that may be a donkey. Joseph we have, and three wise men, I think, but it is hard to tell: All the figures look very much the same.

The manger is missing; so is Mary. And we have no baby Jesus piece. We like to think he grew up with our kids and now travels with them.

From time to time, we have been tempted to replace this remnant with something new, something, more fitting to our more affluent status, perhaps a Nativity set made of stone or glass or ornamental wood.

But we like the old set: We like its simplicity, its memories, even its brokenness. In these ways especially, it is a fitting reminder of the history it seeks to declare, both His and ours.

Because of that, we take our Nativity set each year from a closet full of things and arrange it in a place of prominence. After all these years, it remains the simple yet supremely spiritual way we celebrate the birth of the Savior.

This article is selected from the author`s most recent book, On The Other Side of Oddville, published by Mercer University Press, 2006.