Away in a Manger Revisited
Advent Devotional Guide 2021
PREFACE
The first time I was part of an Advent Booklet at Second Baptist was in 1989. I had seen a notice in the bulletin inviting people to submit a Christmas story for inclusion in an “Advent Book of Daily Readings.” The editors were Jo Anne Beasley, Harold Phillips, and Myra Unger. Knowing Myra Unger was a Professor of English at Jewell, in fact, had been mine, I was nervous my family story might not be good enough. Now I chuckle looking through the 1989 book and its several reprint pages from 1984, 1986, and 1987 booklets—devotionals recycled by necessity, no doubt, to complete the 1989 book. Makes me realize those editors were as eager to welcome new writers as I am today. Some of the Stalwart Saints who contributed to the 1989 book were Virginia and Bill Link, Wesley Duke, Lutie Chiles, and Bill Riggs. What stellar company for the novice Advent Booklet writer I was.
In 2001, when I agreed to co-edit an Advent Booklet for our church after years absent one, I had to recruit writers by calling everyone in the directory until I had enough people to cover all of Advent. The rest of the work to bring our booklet to print was completed by snail-mail. Happily, e-mail and a congregation who loves to put their thoughts to paper has eased the process.
This current Advent, our theme, CHRISTMAS IN PERSON will center around incarnation. Emmanuel! God with us! That in mind, our pastor, Jason Edwards suggests our weekly foci on Hope In Person, Peace In Person, Joy In Person, Love In Person, God In Person and Faith In Person prompt us to think how we incarnate the hope, peace, joy and love of Christ in and through our own lives—how we continue to experience the incarnation in the world today.
My thanks, to the twenty-nine writers who have shared their stories and reflections, some writers new to the roster and some perennials. Thank you, fellow editor, Janet Hill, for creating our guide’s design. Thank you, faithful proofreaders.
This year what I offer as a send-off to our celebration of another Advent Season, is a re-cycle of my page from the 1989 booklet. After a re-read and a bit of self-editing, I confess, my original story has become more historical fiction than memoir. But let’s face it, doesn’t a lot of our reminiscence become more embellished than factual as we grow older? Each precious holiday we look back on, a reprint-plus.
Sue Wright
“Away in a Manger Revisited” by Sue Wright
I began writing Christmas plays for my three years younger sister Judy and me to perform as soon as I could read. Because the plays were, I admit, more reenactment than original, the lines only varied as translated by one Bible or another. While I spoke aloud the Christmas story from Luke, Judy and I acted out the verses. To open and close the program, I played Christmas music on the piano—at first with one finger-- and in time, with chords and flourishes. Throughout the production, we led our parents in a sing-a-long of Christmas carols applicable to each scene of the play.
With just two of us, the cast never changed. Judy played Mary because she was the smallest, I played Joseph because I was the biggest, and my sister’s Tiny Tears doll “laid” the part of Baby Jesus “asleep in the hay,” not even the tiniest advertised tear dripping from her Sears Wish Book, page 57, weepy blue eyes. And, what a perfectly behaved baby, she was!
The rest of the characters were recruits from our collection of dolls and stuffed animals. Giant Easter bunnies posed as shepherds tending their flocks by night, they waiting the “hark” of yours truly shouting, “Glory to God in the highest,” from behind the Christmas tree. My Genuine Walking Doll we featured as a Wise Man, my sister’s furry skunk bought on a trip to Colorado and a random teddy bear from who knows where, his Magi companions. Mom found towels and washrags to costume even the wee-most participant, and bath robes, winter scarves, and her best linens to dress Judy and me.
As a treat after the “pageant,” which was by tradition presented on Christmas Eve, Mom served Seven-up over lime sherbet in our otherwise only-for-company Fostoria goblets along with homemade cut-out sugar cookies we had decorated earlier in the week. It was as “cocktail-party-ish” as our teetotaler family ever got.
Through the years, I gave up hoping I would ever have a live Baby Jesus in one of my plays, though on one occasion I did tap our kitten Tinkerbell to cameo the Infant Christ—and once, a Pomeranian puppy named Sugar. Both fill-ins made quick exits, their swaddling and the baby’s make-shift cradle torn to bits and poor Mary and Joseph covered in scratches.
Then one day when I was eleven years old, my parents announced “we” were expecting a baby and a few months later our baby brother Allen was born. My sister and I were overjoyed to have a new sibling, but never more joyful than that Christmas Eve five months later, when for the first time, we had a real live baby boy to play the starring role of Baby Jesus.
On cue that evening, Mary and Joseph plopped their baby brother’s “sweet head” into the dishpan disguised as a crib, fully expecting Baby Allen’s soft coos of contentment to send the family into a peaceful stanza of “Silent Night. Instead, Baby Brother Jesus decided it was time to REALLY play god and go unscripted ballistic, screaming, “Whaa, whaa, whaa” until his vaunted debut was brought to an untimely end.
Looking back, I don’t suppose Baby Brother Allen’s adlibbed behavior should have come as any GREAT surprise. Not when you and I both know-- if we’re honest as all those years of Sunday School taught us to be-- even “the Little Lord Jesus, [SOME] crying he [made] . . .”
Advent cheer and Christmas smiles, everybody!