During the Christmas season we browsed through the antique stores in our little historic town, more to see what kinds of free treats they were offering than for any actual interest in buying something. We saw numerous manger displays, and the Hero recalled with fondness that he had sometimes played with his family's manger when he was little.
I could see the young Hero being more into boisterous action figures than the solemn Mary and Joseph and Jesus and the shepherds. I couldn't help asking whether Superman had also visited the manger with him.
"No, I wasn't really into Superman," he said.
I took another guess. "How about GI Joe? Did HE play with Baby Jesus?"
He admitted that at times GI Joe had come along to play with Baby Jesus and the other figures in the manger. But he was always well behaved.
A coworker recalled that in her house, Baby Jesus did not appear in the manger scene until Christmas morning, which in some years caused her great concern in the days preceding this. Had someone taken Him? Had he gotten lost? Or worse, accidentally tossed in with her brothers' action figures? One year, unable to bear the thought of any of these possibilities, she added her doll to the manger scene as a stand-in. The doll being several times larger than the rest of the figures, the effect was of Gulliver in the land of Lilliput. But it relieved her mind, and on Christmas morning her doll mysteriously returned to her room. When she ran to the living room, lo, there was Baby Jesus in His rightful place in the creche.
GI Joe. An oversized doll. Misfits in the manger, to be sure. But aren't we all? And yet, we are all welcome there.
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