December 2, 2002
CYBERCOLUMN:
Away in a manger
___By Donna Van Cleve
___When our son Van was little, one his major life goals—along with being a meteorologist, tornado chaser and airplane pilot—was to win the Christmas lighting contest put on by the Chamber of Commerce each year. I just did not have the gumption nor the energy to do something spectacular in the front yard for Christmas every year, so from the time Van was around 9 years old, he was the Christmas lighting technician for the Van Cleve house. If he wanted decorations or Christmas lights on the house, he had to do it. His crew consisted of his younger sister Vanessa and, well, that was it. Sometimes he would coerce the pets into being part of the Christmas decorations, too.
___One year, he decided they wouldhave a live nativity scene in the front yard. For several hours each evening for a week, he and his sister donned mom's bed sheets and posed as Mary and Joseph under a blanket-covered folding ladder. Their 4-H show goats were tethered to the side, along with a white donkey named Snowball munching on hay. Stuffed animals were placed around the manger scene, and cats and dogs strolled in and out at will.
DONNA VAN CLEVE
___One evening around bedtime during the nativity week, I realized the kids weren't in the house yet, so I walked outside and found Van and Vanessa both asleep on the hay in their nativity scene. Troopers, they were.
___A cold front hit toward the latter part of the week, and the kids fought to keep the wind from blowing everything away. After the second bone-chilling night, they retired the nativity scene. But they finally won their first trophy, and it was all their doing.
___Van and Vanessa continued to put the Christmas lights on the house every year until they went to college. Well, except for the few years the lights stayed on the house until the following Christmas, but by then the reds were pink and the blues had faded almost white.
___ My kids told me after they had left home that their decorating hadn't occurred without a few mishaps. Van fell off the house twice and shocked himself several times during those years. Vanessa said Van would be going along the roofline stapling the lights and stepping back until he just stepped off the porch onto the shrubbery. I guess he was practicing being an Aggie. Vanessa said she always seemed to plug the lights in about the time Van stapled into a wire, too. OK, they both made a good Aggie team.
___Both children have enjoyed taking part in numerous nativity scenes in school and church programs throughout the years. It's just as much fun for the parents to watch their children re-enact the events surrounding Jesus' birthday. Vanessa started at two weeks of age playing baby Jesus, mainly because she was the only baby around the church at the time. Another year, Van was a Dallas Cowboy shepherd, according to the bathrobe he was wearing. In South Texas, most fellers' bathrobes rarely come out of the closet except to dress shepherds or wise men around Christmas time.
___The Christmas story is retold again and again, but it never grows old. It's new every year, especially with children around. And now with our 2-year-old granddaughter, we get to start all over again.
___Donna Van Cleve is a writer and wife of one, mother of two, and grandmother of Audrie, and is a new member of Great Hills Baptist Church in Austin.
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