Playing with the Nativity

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One luxury of our modern Western societies is that many of us are able to have a plenitude of Christmas decorations.  The selections in Christmas stories reveal the enduring popularity of nativity scenes, from folk pottery of South America to wood carvings of Asia.  My wife says that as a child her favorites were nativity scenes that allowed her to move unattached figures about.  And, of  course, some of the favorites of children in those scenes are, understandably, the animals.

Seeing a child play with those animals that are a part of Jesus's birth-scene often makes me think of a similar children's toy:  the arks with pairs of animals, based on the story of the flood in the Bible's book of Genesis.  (Christianity shares with Judaism that version of the story of animals being saved; and the figure of Noah as rescuer is also in Islam's Qur'an.)  Young children enjoy animating the animals by moving them about.  And figuring out how to fit all the animals into the ark can be a learning experience.

Our contemporary dictionaries have several definitions for "ark," but one older use of the word endures only in history-recording dictionaries such as the Oxford English.  In the 1700's and 1800's, English gentlemen (and their counterparts in U.S.'s New England) were often collectors of objects from nature:  fossils, plant samples, bones, insects, etc.  If the collector could afford it, he kept those samples in a multi-drawered cabinet that came to be called an "ark."  The Biblical connection was so strong that the wood cabinets were sometimes even designed with a sloping top -- the way the roof of Noah's ark would have to have been sloped so the rain would run off.

Natural scientists of that time period had a "fitting" problem that was even greater than how to fit their growing number of samples into their arks (and even more challenging than children getting toy animals back into their ark).  Namely, figuring out how all the fossils, plants, and animals represented by their samples fit together historically and biologically.  Eventually, Darwin's discovery would prove to be a breakthrough.

This story of the resourcefulness of natural science converges with the resourcefulness of Christianity with its nativity scenes.  That is because the Bible itself does not explicitly depict any animals surrounding baby Jesus in the manger.  Sheep are only referred to indirectly in the Bible's book of Luke; camels are never mentioned in the story of the magi in Matthew; and no donkey is mentioned.  All those animals around the Christmas manger are thus the product of humans' imaginatively interpreting the meaning of the Biblical stories.  It seems as if representing the glory of new creation and the glory of God demanded a more holistic picture -- one that involved a range of animals.

Today, for some of us, another dimension -- another aura -- surrounds those nativity scenes.  Just like Noah, we humans today are trying to rescue animals from extinction by trying to evoke in our human hearts a new birth of the spirit of Creation-Care.  On this ark of planet Earth.

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Do you have any childhood memories involving crèches or living nativity scenes?

(The picture of a nativity is used under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license by L.Kenzel.
Both illustrations of Noah are in the public domain because their copyrights have expired.)

Animal Attire, Fashionable or Not

In the latter third of the 20th century, as awareness grew about how many mammal species might be headed toward extinction, campaigns against the purchasing and wearing of furs emerged.  Such campaigns have helped increase consciousness about the very real danger of species extinction.  The campaigns, however, have sometimes led to stereotypes about the views of people in previous centuries, when animal furs and skins were more often used for clothing.

helping a bear
get warm

Our current fur controversies can easily lead us to associating the wearing of furs for clothing with being less appreciative of animals.  But in previous centuries, that was not always the case. Sometimes the reverse was true.  For example, in the early 1700's, a time in which there were no synthetic furs, Alexander Pope (1688-1744) reminded his readers to humbly remember that:

"... Nature's children all divide her care;

The fur that warms a monarch, warm'd a bear."

Indeed, as we go back further in the history of Western civilization, we often find a greater awareness and appreciation of our human dependence on animals to protect our vulnerable human bodies.  In Shakespeare's King Lear, the king comes upon a man who is without the usual protection of clothing, and turns that person into an object lesson, telling his own companions:  "Consider him well."  Then, speaking to the pitiable man, the king says, "Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool."  The king then reminds us all that, "... unaccommodated [unclothed] man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal..."

The origins of the very first human attire are lost in pre-history.  That inability to name the inventor of clothing, along with an appreciation of clothing, could even lead to understanding clothing as being a gift from God.  That perspective appears in the Adam-and-Eve story in the Bible's book of Genesis.  Ashamed after having disobeyed God, the two archetypal humans try to conceal themselves:  "They sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves."  (Gen. 3:7, NRSV)  This was probably a laugh-line to an audience who would have been well aware how scratchy fig leaves would be.  God, although announcing the sad consequences of humans' trying to be like gods, then extends grace to the helpless humans in the form of more suitable attire:  "And the LORD God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them." (Gen. 3:21, NRSV)

bear tracks in snow

An appreciation of animal attire can also expand to a wonder at the ways animals themselves are "attired."  A half-century before Pope reminded the monarch that a bear had been warmed by the fur he also wore, the naturalist John Ray (1627-1705) marveled at the appropriate variations in the protective covering of different species.  Ray did not yet have Darwin's explanation for how such variations had come about through the natural process of evolution.  Nevertheless, Ray marveled not only at the fur covering some mammals, but also at the insulating blubber of fish in cold waters, and the warming down some birds are attired with.

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Do you notice any changes in Nature as winter comes?  How do you prepare for it?

(The quote by Alexander Pope is from

An Essay on Man, 1733-34, Epistle III.)

(The excerpt from King Lear is from Act III, scene iv, 195.)
(The children's illustration is in the public domain because its copyright has expired.)