The Shallowford Nativity

‘The morning’s task was to turn the farmyard into Bethlehem. The morning began with seeming chaos, vans slewed across the yard, equipment unloaded, and helpers criss-crossing with seemingly random direction. I guess that Bethlehem, too, had been a flurry of activity to prepare for its avalanche of visitors so long ago.

Slowly our Bethlehem took shape. Animals were moved to appropriate places. The sheep were sorted in the sheep race, to be later watched over by the shepherds abiding in the field. A tax office sign was nailed to the door of the pig’s pen, but they seemed not to mind. The barn was labelled ‘Cold Heart Inn’, and lighting and spotlights were rigged up in every corner, and finally a great star, lit by fluorescent tubes was fixed to the roof of the barn.

We were not really ready to start at half-past six, but then I doubt if Bethlehem itself had been ready. The yard was now filled with people, huddled around the tarmac edges of the farmyard. Braziers burned in the middle, surrounded by well-trodden mud.

The upper door of the hay barn opened and a trumpeter signalled the beginning. A Roman soldier announced the decree of Augustus Caesar that all the world should be taxed; and in the midst of people still arriving for the event, came Joseph, leading Mary on Smokey, the old grey pony. Slowly along the driveway, lit by burning torches, they made their way into ‘Bethlehem’, past the tax office, and the grunt of pigs, nervously past the burning braziers, and into the crowd, which slowly, almost reluctantly, opened a way to let them through.

To the inn, and a pause for a carol to be sung. The innkeeper with his stentorian headmaster’s voice refused them entry, but escorted them to the stable. Smokey was tethered to the hay rack and was glad of an extra feed; Mary seated on a bale of straw, while Joseph fiddled around. In the adjacent stall a cow with its young calf. She bellowed at the noise and intrusion, more concerned about her own young than a story of human birth.

This was a real reminder of the grace of God. A throng of unmindful people. The bare muddy earth, the smell and sound of animals. “How deep the Father’s love for us, how vast beyond all measure, that he should give his only Son to make of us a treasure.”

The stars were out for that Shallowford nativity, and Orion with his three starred belt bestrode the south eastern sky, and the great bear appeared to watch over the northern moors. And, of course, our own star, a fluorescent diamond made of wooden battens, and fixed to the roof of the barn, the highest we could manage.’

That was a dozen years ago, but…