The story of Christmas
It was a bright, moonlit night, but there was a sharp cold wind from the east, and there was no door for the stable. That did not matter at all to the bullock and the ass, because they had heavy winter coats on them, but the humans trapped there for the night were shivering.
The young woman was still very pale after her ordeal, and the long journey before that. The man was constantly clapping his chilled hands together and blowing into them. He had given his cloak to the woman.
The child had been wrapped in a shawl, and the mother left it in the crib where the animals’ food was. The bullock and the ass were standing backsides to the wind, their heads close to the crib. The bullock was in his third year, the ass a lot older than that, with long grey ears and brown eyes.
The bullock was chewing hungrily, and at one stage reached his wet nose almost into the area where the baby was lying. The infant was crying a little, with a weak voice. “Bullock”, said the Ass sharply, “If you dare to touch that human child, I’ll give you a kick in the guts you’ll never forget for the rest of your short life!” The bullock moved back instantly. You could see immediately that the mare ass was the boss and authority in this stable.
“Bullock,” she said, in a gentler tone after a moment, during which the baby continued to cry, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, because we have to do something soon or this human child is going to die with the cold.”
The bullock spoke with a gruff and angry voice, “I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten a bit all day, and this small thing is lying right on top of my dinner. It’s myself is going to die of the hunger.”
“What we are going to do,” said the ass, as if she had not heard him, “We will put our heads close together, you and I, right over the baby, and we will breathe our warm breath over him, and that will keep him warm, and he will stop crying.
“He might then live until the morning.”
They did that. The baby stopped crying, and lay quiet. It was only then they saw the mother was holding his small hand through the bars of the crib, from where she lay. The big old man had his left arm around her shoulders. “This is a special child,” said the ass, after a long time. “This is a very special one. This child, dear bullock, is much more important than your dinner, and mine beneath him. I can feel it. I can feel that some day he will be some kind of king or emperor, despite being born in our stable here in Bethlehem.”
Then she said nothing for another long time. And then spoke in a sort of sing-song voice, “Do you know, poor bullock, what I can see?”
“What?”
“I can see, poor harmless creature, that the master will sell you at the next market, and you will not last long after that, because you have eaten many dinners until now, and you are fat. And when you are fat, you are sold to the Romans, and I will not tell you any more than that, my poor friend, except maybe you should not mind not eating your dinner, and others too, because then you will maybe get thin, and you will not be sold so quickly. Go on, keep breathing over this baby.”
She was silent again. There was just the sound of their breathing, and that of the old man. You could not hear the baby at all.
And then she said, “I see more. I’m correct, this is a special human baby. I see, too, that I myself will have a baby next summer when the grass is green, but I will get thin and die afterwards. But my daughter will live and be healthy, and such a good worker that the master will keep her. And she in her time will have many foals.
“And I can tell you now, bullock, that in those years, already the scribes will be writing about this small person. And they will have it wrong too, most of them, because they will say he was lying in a bed of straw, instead of being on top of the sweetest hay in Bethlehem, your dinner and mine.
“And my daughter’s daughter, in one day of magic long after our time, will one day bear this baby, already a king, before all the people into the city of Jerusalem. The people will be cheering in their thousands and throwing flowers under my grand-daughter’s hooves as she passes. This will happen for sure”.
The bullock simply said, “I’m awful hungry.”
And the ass said, “Keep breathing down on those small feet.”
