What is your first memory of a Christmas Crib? Could it be the small crib you received from your catechism class? Or maybe a larger crib that with great attention was put together and decorated at home? Whatever your memory is, it surely centred around a crib with the Baby Jesus, Our Lady and St Joseph together with a cow and a donkey. Dun Karm, Malta’s national poet, at the age of sixty, reminisced about this typical Maltese tradition in his poem Presepju ta’ tfuliti (The Christmas crib of my childhood).
However, Dun Karm does not stop at what he once experienced and remained imprinted on his mind, or for better words imprinted in his heart, while gazing at the Christmas crib of his childhood:
I felt my heart overflowing with happiness and joy,
because I could swear that at that point in time
Jesus was there observing my gaze
and through my eyes he understood what I had in my heart:
In this young child’s heart was the same desire that was in the heart of the Infant Jesus:
an admirable desire that this small crib
remains imprinted on my mind for as long as I live.
And maybe this is the whole point of Christmas. When confronting the problems and difficulties we experience, Christmas reminds us of our profound calling: to welcome Jesus—and others—as small children do. Maybe we’re invited to go beyond our pride and beyond justifying ourselves, and, before this great mystery, remember this outpouring of love that once made the shepherds, Dun Karm and ourselves blush, to continually live it anew.