Since Christmas time, my two-year-old daughter has been obsessed with the Baby Jesus. We have this colorful nativity set we bought in Mexico on our honeymoon. And we set it out each year underneath our Christmas tree, which happens to be a pygmy date palm because we live in Florida and we think it’s silly to ship in some northern pine tree only to watch it dry up and litter our patio with needles for 3 weeks. Our Christmas palm tree lives year round in a very large pot on our patio, and at Christmas time we string lights on it and decorate it with our favorite Christmas ornaments, including (but not limited to), this fabulous set of camels with bells on them. To me our Christmas tree is perfect, it is much like the trees one would actually find in Bethlehem, and frankly, I think people at the time of Christ’s birth would have been more likely to decorate with colorful camels than with nutcrackers and angels that really look like cute babies with wings.
After decorating the tree, and lighting the lights, we place Mary, Joseph and some of the animals beneath it on the mulch in the pot. Around behind the tree are 3 men, slowly progressing to bring gifts to a new born king. On Christmas morning, a baby magically appears before the adoring Joseph and Mary, along with many presents that we give to celebrate this baby’s birth. And there he stays until 3 kings from the east deliver gifts to him 12 days later (or until he is picked up by small, chubby fingers to be paraded around the house).
This year, being nearly 2, my own gift-from-God baby got a full dose of baby Jesus. We sang songs about him, we read stories about him, and we talked about his birthday for days before and after it happened. Baby Jesus was everywhere, and she was taken with him.
Then one day, after the dawn of a new year, after wise men had come and gone, and after I had returned to work, we announced that it was time to undecorated the Christmas date palm and return it to it’s former status as palm tree only. We removed the camels, we unstrung the lights. Finally, in a very formal ceremony, we removed Mary and Joseph and all the animals, and we put baby Jesus away until next year…or so I thought.
“Where is baby Jesus?” Became the almost constant question from my cute, inquisitive toddler. In church, she would point to where a banner once hung and say “where baby Jesus, Mommy.” We are a very liturgical family. I tried to explain to her “baby Jesus is gone, he is a man now.” But that didn’t stop the questions. “Where baby Jesus, mommy? Baby Jesus gone?” “Yes love, baby Jesus grew up.” “Where baby Jesus, mommy?” “We put baby Jesus away, we’ll see him next year.”
Soon it wasn’t a question of where baby Jesus was, she found him everywhere. “Ooooo, baby Jesus!” she squealed pointing to a picture of baby Hope, the daughter of a dear friend. “Mama, I got my baby” she would say, cradling her doll baby, or just about anything else she could cradle, singing “rock-a-bye baby”. “What’s your baby’s name?” I’d ask. “Is baby Jesus.” Came the instant reply. It got to be almost embarrassing “Baby Jesus!” she’d point and yell at any child under the age of 2 she encountered. She started donning towels, or blankets, or scarves on top of her head while holding her baby “I Mary, dis baby Jesus.” She’d explain.
This was all very cute for the month of January, but when February came, and Lent was looming, I began to get concerned. I was glad she loved the baby Jesus so much, but Christmas is just the beginning of a rich and wonderful church year that necessitates our recalling Jesus the grown man. I began trying as hard as I could to turn her attention to the fact in life that all babies grow up, and now we’re thinking about grown-up Jesus. As you can probably guess by now, it didn’t work. I might as well been talking gibberish for all she cared. Baby Jesus was now a shampoo bottle she played with in the bathtub as well as in the face of every infant she saw.
How could I explain to this child the miracle of Easter? How could I make that holiday as real and wonderful to her as the birth of the baby named Jesus? How could I tell her that this baby she loves so much would die? How could she have an Easter at all without that death and the miracle of resurrection? How could she experience new life in the Spirit when she was focused on the same old kind of life we see in every baby? How?!
And then it hit me. Jesus’ death and resurrection are about life. They are about birth. They offer new life to all. They wash us clean until we are in the same pure state we entered the world as babies. My baby sees that life in everything. My baby finds that baby everywhere she goes. For a very short time, my baby sees something so remarkable most adults can’t see it: that each and every baby proclaims the power of God. Jesus can live in any child, and my baby finds him there. For this year, at least, she knows the miracle of the living God each and every day when she finds Jesus all around her. Jesus is alive, just ask my baby, she’ll show you where he is.
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