Round Yon Virgin!

I still have the Nativity creche that I grew up with in my boyhood home. It’s older than I am. From my parent’s home to mine, it has enjoyed a place in the living room at Christmas time for over seventy years. (To repeat: it’s older than I am.)

It’s in pretty rough shape. The stable is made of painted cardboard and is dented badly. Its roof still has straw glued to it, but it’s only a stubby remnant of the original bounty. Mary and Joseph and the manger and two lambs are glued into place so they’ve survived quite in tact, but we can’t say the same for the shepherds and kings who have been readily and rudely handled by small children for decades. The head of one wiseman has been glued back on several times. Apparently he had to have his head examined. The lone camel has severe splints on his legs to keep him standing. One of the shepherds has to lean permanently against the side of the stable. The angel’s wings broke off long ago, and wings have broken off subsequent replacement angels, so presently there is no angel. Wings just don’t glue back on well. Still we haul the gloriously modest ensemble out every year and set the figures up. There’s a deliberate hole in the upper back wall of the stable, through which one can insert a night light that shines down on the Holy Family. All is calm. All is bright.

I am thankful to have been raised in a loving, moral, and devoutly Christian family. But we were Protestants. Our very identity as Christians was defined by the fact that we were in protest against the Catholic Church.

And one of those protests comes in the way the Ten Commandments are numbered. The Protestants split the first commandment into two (and combine the ninth and tenth into one), so that they can give a special call out to “Thou shalt have no graven images”–like those Catholics with their statues of Mary (or of anybody else in a Catholic Church)–but especially Mary. Obviously a sin against the renumbered second commandment.

And yet we had graven images in the house every Christmas. We even called Christmas Christmas, though it is a decidedly Catholic word. We said, “Merry Christmas.” We celebrated the birth of Christ our Savior. But we went to a “church service” not a Mass. We lit candles. One of the few times of the year we did that.

We didn’t call the creche a creche. I would not have even known that word. We also didn’t use the word “Nativity,” even though I might have known that word. We called it a “manger scene.” But that manger scene was not for meditation; it was merely for decoration. Like the ornaments on the tree. Meaningful, yes. But not a sacramental. There were no sacramentals because there were no sacraments. We told ourselves . . . I’m not sure what we told ourselves. The fact is, however, our family was present with the Holy Family every Christmas.

G. K. Chesterton says, “If the world wanted what is called a non-controversial aspect of Christianity, it would probably select Christmas. Yet it is obviously bound up with what is supposed to be a controversial aspect (I could never at any stage of my opinions imagine why): the respect paid to the Blessed Virgin.”

Yes, Christmas is universal in spite of the hatred of the Catholic Church and even the hatred of Christianity and Christ. Even Protestants have felt the sting of the attack on Christmas, even if they have borrowed the name. Still they celebrate. Even the secular world celebrates at the feast it will not name. Even the disenchanted and the exiles dream of a White Christmas. As Chesterton says, “The world is living off its Catholic capital.”

But–for no reason that Chesterton can understand–the Protestants recoil from Mary. That is one element of the Catholic Church that they do not borrow. Mary is a very Catholic girl.

When Chesterton refers to “the stage of my opinions” he is talking about the steps of his conversion. He realized that Mary is definitely what sets the Catholic Church apart from her separated brethren. Even though the splintering away into sect after sect (that is, section after section) was usually over some doctrinal detail rather than over the veneration of the Mother of God, they would end up leaving Mary behind when they left the Catholic Church. Why is that? Because they don’t realize that when they leave, they are leaving their mother. When they reject the Church, they also reject the Mother of the Church.

Chesterton offers a thoughtful reflection when he says, “We think St. Michael glorious when he strikes down the titanic traitor; but we think St. Gabriel more glorious when he stoops in salutation to the peasant girl.”

When an angel says, “Hail, Mary,” it is a Catholic angel.

Joyfully remind your Christmas-caroling Protestant friends to think about that woman when they sing the phrase “Round yon Virgin” in Silent Night.

And remind them, laughingly and lovingly, that every Christmas, when they unpack and set up their Nativity set (the hand-carved one they got in the Philippines or Spain or Israel), that they have a little statue of Mary in their home, if only for a month or two. She is there to help them contemplate the Incarnation.