The nativity set I unpack every Christmas contains a rustic wooden stable made by our father, who made an identical one for my sister, both copies of the one our family used every year of our childhood. For most of my adult life, the familiar figures I put into the stable were also copies of the cheap plastic set we had when I was growing up: my frugal mother never spent money on anything if she could avoid it. Even though these figurines were hardly fragile treasures, they were still faithfully rewrapped each year in tissue paper before being placed back into the stable, and then placed into the cardboard carton that stored it. After a while, this just started to seem silly to me. Nothing is more indestructible than plastic! I finally did replace them in favor of a ceramic set of nativity figures designed by children’s book illustrator Tomie dePaola, a lovely tie-in to my profession as a children’s book creator. These figures are indeed breakable and deserve the tissue-paper treatment.
But these days it no longer seems silly to me to have given superfluous care to the plastic ones. Yes, they were from the dime store; yes, they were mass produced and unremarkable. But this is not a reason against giving them a small share of glory, laud, and honor. In meticulously unwrapping them during Advent and rewrapping them at Epiphany, I was taking time to hold each one in my hand and remember what it represented. It was my love for this family tradition and for this sacred story that made them worth cherishing.
This Advent, let us take time to cherish all the humble items in our lives that bear witness to this sacred story.
—Claudia Mills
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