When I was a student at Jackson Street Elementary School, each year there were Christmas rituals, always the same. At the start of the holiday season, Miss Gotwals, our beloved art teacher (at least, she was mine), arrived with her box of thick colored chalks and, with a few swift strokes that never ceased to amaze me, she turned an entire blackboard into a field of bright reds and greens inhabited by Santa, his elves and eight tiny reindeer.
We also sang Christmas carols and made decorations, cutting Christmas trees or wreathes from green construction paper. We shared scissors to cut out ornaments from scraps of colored paper or tin foil. Then we pasted them on our trees with thick white glue that some of us liked to eat.
Finally, on the eve of our Christmas vacation, came the day we were all waiting for. Our teachers herded us into one big classroom, where we doubled or even tripled up on the benches of desks solidly welded to the floor. The room was dark, the green blinds were drawn. We chattered and giggled and, exceptionally, no teacher scolded or shushed us because Christmas was in the air.
At the back of the room, our principal, Mrs. Violet Davenport, was expertly winding celluloid film into the unwieldy, old-fashioned projector. Once that was done, she called us to order and we all fell silent: the show was about to begin.
Each year it was the same, the program never changed, but rather than bore us, this only increased our pleasure: two films from the early 1950's, with wooden puppets as actors who had the power to enchant us over and over again.
The first film was “The Night Before Christmas.” Because of it, I can still to this day recite a large part of “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” by Clement Moore. The second was a story of the Nativity. I remember the words because of the first film. For the second, it's the images that have stuck.
As I write, I can still see Mary sitting on a donkey, tottering along, with an unsteady Joseph leading the way. Watching them, I worried about them. They looked brittle, fragile, and oh-so-vulnerable. If danger were to strike—bandits or wild beasts roaming the hill country around Bethlehem, with their slow, jerky movements, they would be an easy prey.
“No room for them in the inn” provided another source of worry. In the summer, my family often spent a week in a motel in Wildwood. The weather was hot and muggy and I could imagine a night of sleeping on the beach. But what about in the dead of winter, with freezing temperatures and snow on the ground? That's what Mary and Joseph were up against.
Fortunately for them there was the manger, the bed of straw, the warmth of the animals, the first humble home of the infant Jesus. The shepherds too were ready to help. They may have contributed blankets, food or drink, any help that was asked.
That little film marked me, I might say, for life. It gave meaning to expressions like “homeless” or “no vacancy.” No room at the inn, no place to go. Apparently, for the French, there is no greater fear than this: to find themselves in the street or on the open road, without a home of their own.
Only last Sunday, walking from my apartment to the metro, I was stopped by a young man. In halting French, he asked me if I could help him, give him some money, so he could buy something to eat. He was a refugee, one of the many who fled to Paris after France's biggest illegal refugee camp in the port city of Calais was closed. He was cold and hungry and probably sleeping in the street with temperatures around freezing.
Near the village where I have my country home (Two homes! Two addresses! Imagine the luxury...), in a region where there are many vacant lodgings, refugees are housed in apartments and assisted by the Red Cross and volunteers.
In other regions of France, in the Valley of the Roya River, for example, a mountainous terrain that marks the border between France and Italy, citizens have come together to help refugees attempting to cross from Italy into France. Many of the migrants are minors, traveling alone, with families thousands of miles away in the Sudan or Eritrea.
Citizens of the beautiful, rugged Roya Valley, where snow can fall heavily at Christmas, could no longer bear to encounter the homeless, the isolated, some mere children, wandering alone. They put in place a sort of “underground railroad,” a network of “safe houses,” of citizens ready to feed and house the refugees, to take them to hospital if necessary, to aid them on their way.
I used to live in Nice, not so far from this region. I know the freshets that cut deep ravines in the mountain slopes as they rush towards the Mediterranean Sea; skies so blue as to be harsh; a burning winter sun that, once it disappears behind the mountains, leaves the earth frozen and cold. I wouldn't want to be wandering in those parts alone and without a home.
On December 2nd, Eric Ciotti, a member of the French National Assembly and President of the “département” of the Maritime Alps, where the Roya Valley is located, declared that those who help refugees are “delinquents.” Already on November 23rd, Pierre-Alain Mannoni, a university professor, was put on trial for having attempted to obtain hospital care for three of them. His crime, he says, is not against, but “for humanity.”
Today, many in France and in the US are putting up “no vacancy” signs. There is no room in the inn and if Mary and Joseph were seeking shelter, they might not find even a stable to lay their heads.
Yet, today is Christmas, a day of peace and goodwill towards all. It is also a day of hope as we remember the utter helplessness of a newborn child come to save the world.
In that spirit, I wish all my readers a merry Christmas and renewed hope for the new year.
YouTube link to “The Nativity”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM1UWUapOuo
