After my father died, my brother, sister and I gathered at the family house. We had to pack everything to be sold.
“Remember Mom teaching us to make sauce for the first time?” Nina said, stacking pots in the kitchen.
“Remember Dad making these shelves?” Frank called to us from the living room.
I remembered those things and more. Now the pots and pans, the books, the clothing—even the memories it seemed—were being packed away forever. It was a sad business, and I had that let-down feeling I got in the days after Christmas when it was time to take down the decorations.
Putting up the decorations, of course, was a happy occasion. As the youngest of the family, it was my special job to bring them down from the attic. Each December, when my mother gave me the word, I ran upstairs and pulled hard on the rope that opened the door and dropped the stairs.
What excitement I felt each year as I climbed those rickety steps—each one bringing me closer to Christmas! It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the gloom up there.
Then I always looked for one box first: the old brown one labeled Nativity. The set was a mixed collection my parents had picked up in different places. Some Mom had brought with her when she came to America from Italy.
Downstairs I unwrapped the pieces one by one. Then I set out the stable. This was the most special piece of all because my father had built it himself. To me it looked like a castle. Dad had even attached a music box that played “Silent Night.”
That stable was one of a kind. When it was set up under the tree, I knew the Christmas season had begun. If setting up the Nativity was the best part of Christmas, packing it away in January was the saddest. Still, at least I knew that Christmas would come again.
But some things are gone forever once they’re lost, I thought now as I taped the box of kitchenware shut. Mom, Daddy, their house—our family’s house—all gone. We kids would keep some of our favorite treasures, but nothing would ever be the same. Kind of like the old Nativity.
When I was grown with a family, Mom and Dad rooted around in the attic and sent me the figurines to set up in my own home. But somehow they could never find the stable. Mom wondered if someone hadn’t mistaken that old cardboard box for trash and thrown it out in a fit of spring cleaning.
The figurines just didn’t seem right without the stable. Just like things will never seem quite right without Mom and Dad, I thought. Lord, I know loss is part of life, but some things are too important to lose.
I heard a shout from upstairs. I hadn’t realized my nephew Mark had arrived to help. “What’s this up here?” he called. He had pulled himself up into a crawl space above the ceiling on the second floor. “You should see all this cool stuff!” he said.
My siblings and I listened to the thumps and bumps as Mark dragged himself through the narrow space. “An old shoe-shine box!” he reported. “And an ancient leather suitcase. And I don’t know what this is.”
Mark worked his way back through the crawl space, dragging a big garbage bag behind him. He held out the bag, his hands and arms covered with dust. “Open it up.”
We put the bag on the floor and untied the top. Inside it was the stable—a little rickety, but as beautiful as ever. The music box even let out a few flat notes of “Silent Night.”
“I can’t believe it!” I said. “After all these years!”
Setting up the Nativity has once again become my favorite Christmas tradition. I unwrap all the figurines first. Then I set out the stable and make a perfect arrangement under the tree. Some of the figurines are chipped and broken. The stable’s undergone a few repairs, thanks to a woodworking friend.
But it’s the same Nativity—once lost, now returned to me. The perfect reminder that Christmas will always come again and important things, like God’s love, can never be truly lost.
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