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.
1 comment:
Merry Christmas to you and yours Velma!
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