First published December 22, 1996
My most memorable image
of Christmas came during a late-night ride across northern New Jersey. A
fleeting scene in the side window of my brother-in-law's car as we returned
from Christmas dinner with his relatives to his and my sister's home along
the Hudson River in New York, an image whose making I couldn't describe
in detail, but an image that seared itself in memory and awakened understanding
and sentiment related to the holiday.
On the lawn, the owner of a fairly large Colonial suburban home had set
up a spotlight.
The light shone on the side of the house, two stories high but without a
window. The bleak, blank, white clapboard wall appeared in the frosted air
of December like a movie screen.
The owner must have recognized this.
In front of the spotlight, whether made of wood or cardboard, whether genuine
or artificial -- I couldn't tell, and it really doesn't matter -- the owner
had set up a manger. The spotlight cast a gigantic shadow of a manger against
the bare, white wall of the house.
No other lights adorned
the house, except perhaps some candle lights in the front windows. The shadow
of the manger provided all that this particular house wished to say about
Christmas.
One of only a few cars on the two-lane, blacktop highway winding from north-central
New Jersey back to New York's Palisades Parkway, our car's passing this
cast shadow of a manger arrested my attention all of perhaps six or seven
seconds and was behind. I don't know if anyone else in the car noticed it.
What year this occurred is lost to my memory; I'd guess about 15 to 20 years
ago, but every Christmas, especially as the season approaches and I drive
at night, that black shadow of a manger looms in my imagination to remind
me that the hullabaloo and bright lights, the commercialism and quasi-greed,
the holly and the folly, the good cheer and the clogged expressway drear
all grow faint and unimportant in the shadow of a manger.
I don't want to enter some deep Jungian analysis of the shadow in our lives,
but when I reflect on my experience with this Christmas display, I note
that much of the meaning and significance of Christmas hides in the shadows.
Even our language has a way of shadowing the meaning and significance of
holy moments in our lives.
Consider these phrases:
``Away in a manger, . . .'' or ``the cattle are lowing, . . . .'' On the
surface, we think we know these words; we sing the familiar carols and treat
their diction as part of our everyday life, but it isn't.
I've put together a brief glossary of Christmas diction. My guess is that
for most Americans these words are never used, except at Christmastime,
and then probably only in songs.
There are obvious Christian words that break into expression at Christmas,
such as Emmanuel, Advent, Noel or even the expletive, ``Hark!'' (Quick,
when was the last time you heard anyone in conversation say ``Hark''?)
I've mentioned manger. Unless one is familiar with farm animals, one probably
doesn't think about mangers, and even when the object is discussed it's
likely to be called a trough or a feeding crib.
Do farmers still talk about
cattle lowing? I suspect our modern argot would say,"``The cattle are
mooing.'' Don't trust my judgment, though; I'm a city boy who grew up thinking
all cows are named ``Elsie,'' like the cow on the milk cartons at home.
I'm certain, however, that we don't find frankincense and myrrh in everyday
vocabulary. When hearing ``We Three Kings of Orient Are'' this year, pay
attention to all verses; they define the gifts of the wise men.
This specialized vocabulary isn't exclusively religious, although it does
return to our conversations at Christmas.
Who was Wenceslaus? What is wassail? What exactly is the yule? And what
kind of skies was the American minister Edmund Sears envisioning when he
wrote, ``Still through the cloven skies they come''?
What are the ``bells on bobtail'' that are ringing in the sleigh of ``Jingle
Bells''?
With a little research
I discovered Wenceslaus was a 10th century monarch in Bohemia known for
his generosity. The words of the carol, ``Good King Wenceslaus'' spell out
his legend if one reads all of the poem. This is a Christmas carol I wish
were more popular because its message is often lost, even among the very
religious.
Any good dictionary will note that wassail is a spiced ale and that wassailing
was a tradition in Old England of traveling toasts to the health of neighbors
and friends. In one sense of the word, anytime we raise a glass and say
``Cheers,'' or ``Salut,'' or ``Kampai,'' we are wassailing.
``Yule'' is a derivative of the Icelandic word for Christmas; a bobtail
is a clipped or shortened tail perhaps tied with ribbon and bells; and the
cloven skies refer to the apocalyptic splitting of the heavens to give angels
entrance to earth.
Casting amongst the shadows of Christmas words like this, I was bound to
come across a word used almost daily in American conversation, usually in
an uncomplimentary manner.
One of its meanings is
the synonym for donkey, the companion of the oxen and sheep at the manger,
whose Biblical name my friends and I smirked at behind our Sunday School
teacher's back.
It's the same word David Letterman, with his juvenile and profane approach
to humor, irrelevantly and irreverently seeks to slip into his ``Top-Ten
List'' on a daily basis.
At Christmas, it comes out of the shadows to refer to one of ``The Friendly
Beasts.''
``I,'' said the donkey, shaggy and brown,
``I carried His mother uphill and down,
I carried her safely to Bethlehem town.
I,'' said the donkey, shaggy and brown.
It was for animals such as the ass that the manger was intended, but the
shadow on the side of a suburban New Jersey house seasonally reminds me
that simple, crude, little things often are much more important than they
seem.
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