There it is again, set up in every Azorean home, in that of my sister, with whom I also live. This is a tradition that we should never give up, no matter how often we are presented with other ways of living the Christmas season, unfortunately without realizing its deepest content: the birth of Jesus, God-made-man.
In the crib is the baby Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger, adored by Mary, his mother, and Joseph, his adoptive father, under the friendly breath of the animals that once populated the place, especially the cow and the donkey, which came from the fertile imagination of the author of the first crib, who was, more than eight hundred years ago, St. Francis of Assisi, no less.
You can see shepherds and other people carrying their gifts around the crib to the Child God. And the Magi don’t miss the call, guided by the star above the grotto, bearing mystical gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Everything else is an accessory in the nativity scene. Still, it also appears in the one at home, put together by the expert hands of my sister, who never gives up the task, including a beautiful pond made of blue paper, in which a figure of a woman is washing clothes, and another doll is fishing. At my younger brother’s house, who inherited the nativity scene figures from our parents, three young people wearing everyday clothes, which are totally anachronistic, play various instruments to brighten up the atmosphere of the blessed night. And the youngsters absorb with amazement all the wisdom in these small details of the nativity scene, passing down through the centuries and successive generations.
Quite a few years ago, there was a craze for living nativity scenes, and I went to see one at a Christmas party in the church of Calhetas on the North Coast, where a Franciscan friar, a native of Ponta Garça and with the soul of a poet, was parish priest at the time. The crib, if I remember correctly, was set up in the main chapel, occupying the place of the image of Our Lady of Good Voyage, the church’s patron saint, and the Baby Jesus was really flesh and blood, newly born and just baptized, on the lap of a grown-up girl dressed as Our Lady and with a boy at her side dressed as Saint Joseph. It so happened that Hugo, who called himself the improvised Baby Jesus, started crying, and the poor girl on the altar couldn’t get him to shut up… His real mother had to come and help, and only then could the simulation continue. At the end of the Midnight Mass, the Child was kissed by all the people present, as the current restrictions due to the pandemic had not yet appeared. I also went to kiss Jesus-Hugo, who is now a big boy who has completed his university studies and is working abroad. As for the living nativity scenes, I understand they still do them in some daycare centers.
Merry Christmas!

João Bosco Mota Amaral Was the first President of the Autonomous Region of the Azores From 1976 until 1995.

Translated from Portuguese by Diniz Borges