The 12 blogs of Christmas: #10 - And a little child shall lead them...

Did anyone notice anything unusual about the photo of the Fontanini Nativity in the entry I made yesterday? No? Look again:

See the #1 candle in the back of the stable? That's been a permanent fixture in this Nativity scene for the past five or six years. The story of how it got there is one of my favorite Christmas stories:

I had put out all the Christmas decorations and had them arranged just as I liked them. One day I walked past the Fontanini Nativity and saw the candle I'd used on the kids' first birthday cakes standing against the wall in the stable.

I took the candle out and put it in the junk drawer. A day or so later, it was back in the stable. Again, I put it in the junk drawer. The next day, I saw Annie putting it in the stable again.

"Annie! Stop messing with my Nativity," I said. "Get that candle out of there."

Setting her up to see how clever she was, I went on...

"That candle does not belong in the Nativity," I goaded, waiting for her to refute me with the reminder that Christmas is indeed the birthday of Jesus.

"Yes it does," she said as she took the bait.

"Oh yeah? Why?"

"I put that candle in the stable because Jesus is number one!"

And so every year, that polka-dotted candle takes its place in the stable behind the Baby Jesus to help us remember that whether the gifts are bought, the cookies are baked, the cards are sent, what really matters is that Jesus is, indeed, #1.