Connected While Apart
Catherine’s Creche 

One of the season’s traditions that legend says goes back to Saint Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century.

Dear Mayfield,
Over the course of the 1970’s my mother bought two creche sets at the Christmas Dove in Arlington, Vermont.  Different from one another, they were both made in Italy,  The first set was given to Richard, our pastor and family friend and the other to me.  In the case of my set, I received a piece each of the four Sundays during Advent over several years until Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus, the animals, the angel, the shepherds, the kings, and several townspeople with their instruments were all in place.  When Amanda and Molly were quite young, my aunt and uncle gave each of them a beautiful, indestructible, creamy-colored, soft plastic creche set, and we had a wooden one complete with a stable that was just right for little hands too.  The set my mother had given me was always positioned high enough so that it wasn’t in easy reach of two small children.

In recent years Richard and his wife Mary Jane have told me that eventually their set will come to me, so that one day each of the girls will have one from Grandma Catherine whom they never knew.  Also in recent years, Amanda and Molly have told me how much they wanted to play with mine as well during their young years and longingly gazed at wherever it was perched. Over decades of ministry programming, I have accumulated various other creche figures, but as I downsize, these are the ones I am hanging onto for the long haul.

Whenever I unpack the now old Famous Barr box, a former Saint Louis department store, in which I have long stored the creche pieces, and get out the figures one by one, I am gifted with so many memories of people I have loved and who have loved me.  My mother Catherine, Amanda and Molly, and Richard and Mary Jane whom I have known since I was sixteen – they are all with me as I position humans, animals, and an angel in the familiar scene.  It is so good to have them present in mind and heart.

This difficult Covid year, people are making varied decisions about how to decorate for the holidays.  Some are pouring great energy into decorations, because it is a holiday activity that hasn’t been eliminated from what is advisable this season.  Others among us find the task hard, even painful, because there is so much we are missing right now.  My suggestion is that we each figure out what will work best for us in this unusual time.  If it is too much of an emotional burden to do what we have always done, we don’t have to do it. We can try another holiday approach.  If repeating long standing traditions exactly as we have before brings us comfort and stability, that is likely a good course to follow.  There certainly isn’t one right way.  This is a good year to eliminate shoulds and oughts.  As we approach this third Sunday in the Advent season, the Sunday of Joy, I pray that joy will visit each of us in increments that are great or small.  And as always, please remain safe and peace be with you, Martha