A Christmas Story

“Where the hell is Baby Jesus?” This was the burning question we kids asked every Christmas. Although we Wilsons were dutiful Catholic children, the Mystery of Christmas for us wasn’t how Jesus could be born from a virgin mother. God no. The true Mystery of Christmas for us was who took Baby Jesus from our tiny terra-cotta crèche. Did my kid sister lose him in her Polly-Pocket collection? Did my baby brother suck him dry like his pacifier? Did the cat eat him thinking he was kibble? In a house of six hyped-up-on-candy-cane delinquents, the fatalities were endless; and trying to find Baby Jesus was like a quest for the Holy Grail - only worse, as Jesus was the size of dust.

I can’t tell you how often we took Jesus’ name in vain in our raging rumpus to find our Mystery Child. I can only tell you that, miracle of miracles, we always did. Until one Christmas we didn’t. And we didn’t care anymore. We had all grown up, and apart, and away; and become, in our own ways, religious refugees. And Jesus was lost forever.

But, maybe not, as, inexplicably, I still find myself in church all the time. It’s just never a building with a steeple. It’s a place I discover in the middle of nowhere, where I have no idea how I got there, and no desire to ever leave - like this place in the Serengeti; a place that makes me think that if I ever wanted to erect a new Nativity Scene, this is where I’d set it. My manger would be a baobab. My Mary would be a Maasai madonna. My shepherds would be Maasai boys standing on anthills. My Wise Men, wise Maasai women. And my harkening angels, the endless flamboyance of flamingoes I witnessed in Tanzania.

And my Baby Jesus? Maybe he’d be a Maasai baby. Or maybe he’d be ALL the Maasai. Or ALL the flamingoes. Or a cathedral of baobabs. Or everything that lives. Or maybe I wouldn’t have a Jesus at all. I don’t know. All I know is that, in that all-to-brief moment, I felt a bit undone by the wonder of the world; and I thought maybe I should be genuflecting to something in my tentative truce with religion.

Outtakes from a feature for Smithsonian Magazine on indigenous tribespeople of Tanzania.

“For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” - Wendall Berry