Shepherds - West Coast Style

As often happens, one of my granddaughters got me to thinking. This time it was the four year old.

It started because I gave her a Christmas sticker book. There was a page showing a stable and another page showing a field, both at nighttime with stars in the sky. There were stickers representing the main characters on the night Baby Jesus was born.  

She placed them all carefully in field and stable, then came and showed me and explained that the shepherds had their "hoods" on because it was raining.   And also, everyone else was in the stable because it was raining and they didn’t want to get wet! (The stable was pretty crowded with the Holy Family, animals, Wise Men, camels and all!)

I chuckled and thought it was cute because she has no idea about garments worn during that era and to her the head covering is a hoodie like she has on her jacket which she puts up when it's raining. Of course. Perfectly natural for a West Coast child to visualize the scene as she knows the world.  And - guess what - it was raining pretty hard while we were having this conversation!

I'm quite sure when I was a child on the Prairies, I visualized the scene playing out in the cold and snow. Not only was there snow outside the door, there were paintings of snowy scenes and there was glistening glitter on Christmas cards.  Many a Christmas Eve I looked up into the cold clear night sky and imagined a very bright star.

There must be youngsters all around the world with similarly personalized vantage points. Half the world has hot Christmas weather so there a child would no doubt think of the garments as being light and flimsy and the shepherd's headcovering would keep the sun off.

We overlay our understanding of events through our cultural and environmental lenses even as adults, don't we? Or we overlay with the historical knowledge we've accumulated.

What comes through to me is that the truth is still the truth - I mean Jesus was born  - no matter how we envision it unfolding.  God bless the children and help us keep our faith simple.