Poor Baby Jesus

Years ago, Baby Jesus was an eagerly-anticipated guest in the Bean household. Throughout the weeks of Advent, the children kept careful track of their extra acts of kindness and sacrifice. In preparation for Jesus’ arrival, for each good deed they performed, they were rewarded with a piece of hay-colored yarn to deposit in a small wooden manger.

After weeks of “right-away obedience” and “sharing when it’s hard,” we had amassed what looked like a properly warm, wooly bed for the Christ child. When the children left the manger beneath the tree and went to bed on Christmas Eve, they were confident that Baby Jesus would not be able to resist such a well-prepared bed of hay; they were certain that he would come.

And come he did. In an act of pure generosity and love, on Christmas morning Baby Jesus miraculously appeared—in the form of a tiny rubber doll—in our humble living room. An angelic swirl of honeyed hair crowned his miniature head. A fringe of dark lashes framed his eyelids and his creamy complexion fairly glowed in the light of early morning. Wearing only a cloth diaper, he slept contentedly on the bed of hard-earned hay. That is, until that year that 18-month-old Gabrielle discovered him.

“Jeeeeeeeezzzzzus... Baaaaaaaby!...” squealed Gabby as she snatched the Christ child from his manger bed.

And thus began a series of unspeakable humiliations.

With fat fingers, she clutched Jesus’ tiny rubber body to her chest and then held him out to show the family. In strict adherence to the toddler law of “All Dolls Must Be Naked,” she relieved him of his swaddling clothes. She poked his eyes. She twisted his arms. She covered his body with slobbery kisses.

Horrified, we hastened to cover Our Lord’s nakedness and returned him to the manger. Later on that morning, however, as I was sifting through the traditional piles of ripped-up wrappings and discarded boxes beneath the tree, I found that the manger was empty once again.

“Where is Baby Jesus?” I called above the whirr of Ambrose’s radio controlled car. Many pairs of innocent eyes blinked back at me, but I got no answer.

After a brief search we found him, face-down and naked, on the cold bathroom tiles. As I was re-clothing him and preparing to return him to the manger, Gabrielle toddled up beside me.

“Baaaabyyyy!” she shrieked again as she lunged toward him with chubby arms outstretched. The hapless doll’s eyes seemed to dart up at me in a silent panic. Thinking quickly, I distracted his tormenter with a candy cane, re-clothed him, and then returned him to the manger.

Throughout the Christmas season, however, I continued to find the Divine Infant in an endless number of unfortunate situations. I discovered him nearly smothered beneath a zoo of stuffed animals under the living room couch. I found him crammed and crumpled behind a stack of Easy Readers on the children’s book shelf. I pulled his small soaking body from the dog’s water dish.

Each time I found the doll, I rescued him, apologized profusely, and returned him to the manger. It was never long, though, before I discovered him in yet another compromising position.

Though our Baby Jesus was just a doll, it was a doll that represented Christ, and I began to feel a bit uneasy about my youngest daughter’s blatant lack of reverence. I considered relocating Jesus’ manger to a safer location…like on top of the refrigerator, for instance. In the end I didn’t do it, though, because I thought that Jesus—the real Jesus—would rather remain accessible to the children.

After all, isn’t it just like Our Lord to subject himself to innumerable indignities out of love for us? Didn’t he come to us as a tiny, helpless, human baby precisely for the purpose of suffering for our sins and earning us heaven? For our sake, he was born into a world of poverty, danger, and discomfort. For our sake, he faced a cold winter night, an uncertain future, and the threat of Herod’s jealous rage—all as a helpless infant. In order to make himself accessible to all, God made himself vulnerable to all, even to those he knew would seek to harm him.

Besides, despite her abusive actions, at least Gabrielle was attempting to show Baby Jesus some sincere affection. In truth, Our Lord comes to each of us in love, but many of us fail to return that love in kind. Our human weakness, our sinfulness and selfishness prevent us from returning Christ’s love as we should. We neglect him. We leave him longing for our affection.

The good news is that it is not too late. God is patient, generous, and long-suffering. This Christmas season, he comes to us in the form of the Christ child once again. And he isn’t locked away or hard to reach. He is right here within our grasp…waiting for us to rescue him from the dog dish and welcome him into our hearts with love.