!Christ --- agk's diary 27 December 2024 @ 03:39 UTC --- written on Pinebook Pro in the living room after daughter sleeps --- First daughter's animals all and sundry waited around the stable or cave where Miriam labored and Yusuf boiled water. The angels arrived, the child, the shepherds. The three Persians aren't here yet. I, said the cow all white and red, I gave Him my manger for His bed. I gave Him my hay to pillow His head; I, said the cow, all white and red. My three favorite Christmas picture books feature the beasts. Noel du Petit Lapin by Eleonore Schmid, 2000 (Hare's Christmas Gift). A hare nervously watches as butterflies and snakes, foxes and elk are oddly all awake at dusk. The beasts rush with sticks, grass, and feathers to a stone stable. A tired man and woman arrive. The man makes a fire under a heavy pot. Beasts' eyes shine as each in turn looks in the stable. The hare gathers courage, sees the infant asleep on the bed of grass and feathers, joins him in the manger to warm him. The infant smiles. Schmid drew the infant very like she did in her beautiful 1990 book The Story of Christmas from the Gospel According to Luke. The ox and donkey, so they say, did keep His holy presence warm.... How many oxen and donkeys you know at such a time would do the same? How Little Porcupine Played Christmas by Joseph Slate, illustrated by Felicia Bond (who also drew If You Give a Mouse a Cookie), 1982. Little porcupine so wants a part in the baby in the manger play. The animals in his barn school merci- lessly bully him and deny him a role. His mama gives him big prickly hugs; calls him the light of her life. He's stage crew and janitor on opening night when the audience of mamas and papas notice there's no star. He clambers up the tree, covered in tinsel. He was already the star of his mama's life, but now he's the star itself, holy light, last suddenly become first. My mom read this to me every Christmas season. Enough for Him, whom cherubim worship night and day. A breastful of milk and a mangerful of hay; enough for him whom angels fall down before the ox and ass and camel which adore. Christina's Carol by Christina Georgina Rosetti, illustrated by Tomie DePaola, 2021. (We also love DePaola's 1978 The Clown of God, a story of Christmas devotion in Renaissance Italy.) Tomie died in 2020 before he finished illustrating Christina's 1872 poem. His estate supplied angels and shepherds, Madonnas, nativities, and magi to finish the book. From Rosetti's snowy land we travel to first-century Palestine where Imran and Hannah, Miriam, Alishaba and Zakariyya lived, where Yahya and Isa were born. Paintings and dioramas include three wildly different Madonna and childs on one page. Stylistic cacophony caused by mid- project death hints incarnation will always escape representation. Shepherds, too, came carrying the good things of the flock: sweet milk, fresh meat, fitting praise.... A fitting sight that to the Lamb a lamb should be offered. The lamb bleated...thanks to the Lamb who freed sheep and oxen from sacrifices. My daughter's creche recalls the first, Francis of Assisi's. Twenty years of crop failures, earth- quakes, Crusader war, and pestilence followed Salah ad-Din's death. For a few days of the four-week ceasefire of 1219, Francis met Sultan (and Salah ad-Din's nephew) al-Kamil. In 1220 Francis and his companion sailed back to Italy. It was Francis's only trip to Palestine. At Christmas 1223 he brought the nativity to vivid life in the mouth of a small Italian cave, wrote Bonaventure (c.1260): Three years before his death...he celebrate[d] the memory of the Birth of the Child Jesus, with all the solemnity that he might, for the kindling of devotion. That this might not seem an innovation, he sought and obtained license from the Supreme Pontiff, and then made ready a manger, and bade hay, together with an ox and an ass, be brought unto the spot. The Brethren were called together, the folk assem- bled, the wood echoed with their voices, and that august night was made radiant and solemn with many bright lights, and with tuneful and sonorous praises.... Solemn Masses were celebrated over the manger, Francis...chanting the Holy Gospel. Then he preached unto the folk standing around of the Birth of the King in poverty. Yusuf grew up 4 km from Miriam's parents. The occupier ordered them to leave their city, go be counted where Yusuf's distant ancestors came from. They walked 150 km in a week and a half through cold rain. First daughter's animals welcome tired strangers far from home stinking of sweet breast milk, sour sweat, earthy mildew. Beasts await and celebrate Isa's birth in the cave where they're stabled. Young laboring Miriam, far from her people, hopes between contractions this guy won't hurt or leave her. When my daughter discovered the baby Christmas morn, she cuddled the figurine, coo'd over it. "Mary is sleepy," she said, "Now she can rest. Her baby is okay." Miriam and Yusuf weren't in the cave a month later. The Persians visited them in a house. The star which they saw in the Orient went ahead of them until it came and stood above the place where the child was. (Just looking at the star flooded them with great happiness.) So they went inside the house and saw the baby with his mother. On Epiphany, three wise guy figurines will ring our doorbell. Before then I guess we'll install the holy family in the playmobil house. The beasts' time will have passed. --- Carols: The Friendly Beasts (12th century France) Burgundian Carol (Bernard de la Monnoye, 1700) In the Bleak Midwinter (Christina Rosetti, 1872) At the birth of the Son a great clamor took place (Ephrem the Syrian, 4th century) Scripture: Matthew 2:9-11 (CPV)