A Christmas reminder to keep life simple

Today, Christmas Day, we celebrate a man whose entire life was lived simply. His humble beginnings in a stall, surrounded by shepherds and sheep, are testament to that. His message was also simple-- 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength'. Also-- 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Simple words, and yet how difficult they are to practice sometimes. In the midst of our complicated lives, it's good to be reminded of what really matters. That is the message of Christmas.

Christmas crèche in St.Olav's church

The Christmas season lingers, as was evident at the evening mass tonight at St. Olav’s Catholic Church. Even though the church year has moved on to the baptism of Jesus, the nativity scene, or crèche (see photo) as it’s called, is still on display to the right of the altar, and there were still a number of people after mass who lined up to walk by it and to touch the feet of baby Jesus. There are a lot of church parishioners who originally came from the Philippines; they seem to practice this particular custom. Perhaps other nationalities do as well. I lit two candles and said a prayer in front of the crèche. Seeing the life-size crèche always brings back memories of the crèche at Transfiguration Church in Tarrytown. It was a beautiful crèche with lovely life-size statues of Mary, Joseph, Jesus and the shepherds, and they were made even more beautiful after my sister and her friend scraped, sanded and repainted them. I was the documenter for the occasion, the picture-taker, with my trusty Kodak Instamatic camera. I got some nice photos of their handiwork.

The crèche is a peaceful display, a pastoral scene that is reminiscent of all the best things about childhood and Christmastime that I can remember—a stable, a starry sky, shepherds tending their sheep, angels on high, choirs of angels, and the placing of the child in a manger. Advent (from the Latin word adventus that means ‘coming’) is an important time in the church calendar, since it is a time of preparation for the birth of Christ. There is a lot of symbolism and ritual in the Church. We really prepared for Christmas in Catholic grade school (grades 1-8), starting already at the end of November. In art class we made a Judah tree, which is really the family tree of Jesus, but I don’t remember all the particulars, just that Mrs. Downey, our art teacher, had us use construction paper to design, cut out, and build a tree on which we placed the different ancestors of Jesus. We hung the tree in the classroom. An interesting way to learn biblical history, but I don’t remember much of it all these years later if that was the intent. We also spent time analyzing some of the famous paintings of the Annunciation (when Mary learned from the angel Gabriel that she was to be the mother of Jesus). We learned about the meaning of the Christmas tree; usually an evergreen tree, it is the symbol of the everlasting Christ. All of what we learned was related to the nativity. My parents also set up a small table-top crèche each year, and I continue that tradition. 

There is a bookstore in Akersgata in Oslo called Bok og Media, which is one of the oldest bookstores in Oslo and also a bookstore that has a large amount of Christian literature and media (http://bokogmedia.no/bm/main/bm9001/document/document11/Bok+%26+Media+Oslo.html). It has a special exhibition on the lower floor that they open to the public at Christmastime. You enter a long passageway, and as you enter, you are welcomed by the history of the Old Testament written on the wall leading up to the birth of Christ, as well as a map of the entire biblical area showing Galilee, Nazareth and Bethlehem, among others. As you proceed along the passageway, you will see that it is lined with crèches from countries all over the world. The last room before you exit is a room that is actually a life-size stable with a life-size crèche display. There are benches in front of it so that you can sit and reflect on the scene in front of you, while peaceful Christmas music plays softly in the background. When you emerge from the exhibition, you come out into an area of the bookstore that sells crèches and crèche figures, as well as Christmas music and books and other Christmas items. It is well-worth a trip to experience this exhibition. I have been there twice, and will definitely go back again. It is one of the many ‘hidden’ treasures of Oslo that someone needs to tell you about, otherwise you will never know they are there. The hidden treasures are some of the things I want to tell you, my readers, about in this blog.