Brock Thoene in a recent booklet entitled Why a Manger? tells the story of how his mother celebrated Christmas in 1945. She was a war widow, and with her daughter, had moved from Ohio to Bakersfield, California, to start a new life. Her job as a waitress in a hotel restaurant barely allowed her to afford an apartment and food for the two of them. Anything they would have for Christmas would have to come from whatever tips she made. What she chose to spend that money on was a plaster Nativity Set she purchased at the local dime store.

  Fifteen years later she had remarried and had three more children. As they were setting up for Christmas Brock asked his mother about the chipped manger scene that had the price of 10 cents still on the base of one of the sheep. As his mother related the story of her first Christmas in Bakersfield Brock wondered why she didn’t spend what little money she had on something else. Her answer made a deep impression on him. “I had to make a choice,” she said plainly. “I couldn’t afford to buy a tree, a manger scene, and a Christmas dinner. When I considered the cost, I knew only the manger scene would last. Every year we take down the decorations and haul the tree out to the curb for the trash man. But look, honey... Mary and Joseph. Gabriel the archangel. The Wise Men and camels. Shepherds and their lambs. All gathered to adore the baby Jesus lying in the manger. A little beat up with time, yes, but there they are. It’s still the same story.” “It tells the true story about the birth of God’s Son on earth. The baby in the manger is what started Christmas. It is Christmas. That’s why the manger will last on and on, long after the tree is thrown away and the toys wear out.”

  The manger will last on and on! Long after the tree is chopped up or burned, long after all the decorations have been put away, long after the last bit of pie and ham have been devoured, long after the gifts have been shelved, taken back, exchanged or discarded, long after the greeting cards have been thrown away, the manger of Jesus remains. Why? What is so powerful about the scene of Jesus’ birth that outlasts all the other expressions of Christmas?

  I think that Brock Thoene’s mother was right, the manger IS Christmas! It is the Nativity Scene that powerfully depicts for us God’s intention and God’s heart for His people, for us. Whether represented in a beautiful painting, art work in a book, the simplest or most elaborate Nativity Set, a tree ornament, acted out on stage, re-enacted on film, set to music in a Christmas hymn, or read from the pages of God’s Word, the story of Jesus’ birth in a stable grips us like few other stories. [And that’s why the Nativity is my very favorite Christmas decoration.]

  To think that God would even consider becoming flesh to live among His sinful creatures is amazing. But then to realize that He did not come with power and wealth to seek His people from a position of status as would befit a king is astounding. Instead He came in the most humble of circumstances imaginable: born under a cloud of gossip about His parentage, delivered in a barn, laid to sleep in a feeding trough. This is how God entered His world. This is how God chose to save His people from their bondage. This is how He responded to The Hopes and Fears of all the Years, how He brought Joy to the World, how He invites all, poor and rich alike, to Come and Worship, because when we find the one born in a manger, we realize This is Christ the King!

  Yes, the manger lives on, beckoning the whole world to consider the depth of God’s love that would start at the lowest social level in order to lift all up to Heaven. The manger lives on in a cross. The One born in that manger lives on in Heaven. And He lives on in us if we call Him Lord and Savior. Are you looking for Jesus? “You will find Him wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger!”

Denis Whittet