There’s a little bit of magic in every box! ~Adam Rex
Manger ©️2021 LSAuth.
✍️When we were young children, my father would drive me and my siblings to Kenny’s shoe store at the start of the school year in September. It was always a special time for me. I always loved the smell of brand-new and the gift of wearing something that no one else had worn before me, even if they were only non-stylish saddle shoes—“the only kind suitable for walking” my father said.
I was equally happy to bring home a brand new shoebox, careful not to damage its pristine perfection. For the next few months, it was my container to hold all the trinkets and materials I had been gathering to build my Christmas crèche. I would collect anything that could remotely be fashioned into a human figure or animal or stable. Some of my core treasures included old corks, crumpled aluminium foil, wooden spools, Popsicle sticks, clothespins, wire, dried grass, and twigs that looked like miniature trees. Although I never succumbed to the temptation to use my readymade plastic Disney caricatures or my tiny troll dolls, I did think that the white haired, gnomish faces of the trolls looked like Wise Men.
When Advent season arrived in December, I would open my treasure trove, spread all the contents over the floor and begin to arrange and compose. Infinite possibilities were unleashed while my imagination built grander mangers than I would ever be able to accomplish in reality.
Painting and drawing the details of the facial features were the best part, followed by making clothes for the Magi and the shepherds from the bag of mushrooming fabric scraps and notions. Animals were hard for me. Sheep didn’t seem well served with a mere cotton ball — but they glued well to cardboard. I was often happiest with my donkey — a woven “blanket” on its back could cover many mistakes in my anatomical forms, and the “realistic” mane and tail made of embroidery floss seemed perfect. The lid of the box was always the crowning pediment roof, just like all the houses I drew obsessively on the blank back of the weekly school luncheon menu handed out every Friday afternoon.
My memory could be inaccurate but I don’t recall this endeavour ever being a required homework project even though I attended Catholic school. I just loved every opportunity to create and make something, to mark and celebrate a special time. The Christmas season added even more magic to my engaged imagination. I can’t remember any particular one of the finished mangers in any one of all those young years. Nor can I remember if I ever felt happy with the result or if I ever anointed any one of them “my favourite”. How long any one of them survived beyond their completion was never important for I tacitly understood that my homespun creations couldn’t achieve the gold standard of being put away safely with the other more standard and worthy Christmas ornaments. I don’t remember feeling sad about this inadequacy— or their inevitable fate in the trash can.
I am sure I didn’t even realise that I was learning one of life’s lessons — that so much of the hope and fulfilment in creative pursuits begins in the slow and non-linear process of becoming, with all the unforeseen discoveries and surprises along the way. All the days leading up to Christmas culminating in Christmas Eve was the best time of all. Christmas Day held the shadow of sadness for me back then because it seemed so final.
With each completion I have learned that I need to start all over again, in every endeavour, every day, so that the destination or goal is just a short break before I start another journey.
I wanted to share this recollection of my childhood, if only to say that this memory is revived every year at this time when I look at a shoebox, in December, before Christmas.
May this holiday season bring you joy🌲
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