Who’s Out in Heaven?

In our coastal town as Christmas approaches, droves of holiday-makers join the locals to crowd together at the shopping mall. Sometimes I have to go to the mall as well, but in December it tests my patience. Already, in the carpark, I had to ignore the jingle playing over the outdoor speakers: a crooner warbling McCartney’s mawkish “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time”.

At the biggest department store’s entry, I asked the young woman shop-assistant checking bags, “Do you have nativity scenes?”

Her eye-shadow was an alarming purple. Her lipstick was black. She seemed friendly and helpful. “Hum, maybe in the toy department?”

I went to the toy department and walked along the aisles, threading my way between throngs of shoppers and their children. Another shop assistant, a slim fellow likely still in his teens, was busily re-stocking shelves with cartoon and movie figurines.

I asked, “Do you have any nativity scenes? You know, models of Mary and Joseph in the stable at Bethlehem.”

He scratched behind his ear with the tail of a plastic T-rex he was holding. At the side of his head his dark hair was shorn—a lightning bolt shaved into the short bristles—but his fringe was lank.

“We do,” he said confidently. “In the next aisle.”

Pleased, I followed him. He handed me a box. “There’s nothing you can’t get in Lego.”

The cover displayed a little bearded Joseph holding a staff, and a blue-robed Mary cradling the baby Jesus, all in bright hard geometric plastic. I couldn’t see myself using this as an aide-memoire to help celebrate Advent.

“You could buy some basic building Lego to make a stable,” he suggested. “And this packet has some palm trees,” he said, showing me two more boxes.

He was helpful, no doubt.

“Ah, I was hoping for something more traditional,” I said.

“Have you looked online? There’s heaps of Christmas gear on our website.”

I handed back the Lego. “I hadn’t thought of that. I’d like to get something today if possible. But thanks anyway.”

“No worries.” He put the boxes back on the shelves. “Try the bargain shop,” he said. “They’ve got all kinds of weird stuff you wouldn’t expect.”

I smiled and said, “Good idea, I’ll go there now.”

A queue of mums and kids waited at a photo stall with a man dressed as Santa Claus. That surprised me: I’d have thought the suspicion around strangers, especially men, would have ended that promotion.

The bargain shop was crowded with eager shoppers, but I entered and scanned the shelves. I noticed a bay of Buddhas and thought maybe I was near the right section. I walked past the fat, sleeping Buddha garden statues, the kneeling child Buddhas, the standing Buddhas, the sitting laughing Buddhas. Some were plaster, some plastic. The Buddhas ended and the novelty garden gnomes started: gnomes holding beer cans, gnomes in footy jerseys, obnoxious gnomes giving the finger.

There was a whole aisle of Christmas decorations: lots of stars, from glittery packeted constellations to large glow-in-the-dark battery-powered stars, strings of fairy lights and volumes of tinsel and bags of shiny Christmas tree baubles.

A shop assistant, a middle-aged woman, came into the aisle. She was my generation and would likely understand more precisely what I was after. Her grey hair was shortish and tousled; over her forehead an upstanding tuft was dyed bright pink.

I approached her. “Do you have any nativity scenes?”

“What’re they?”

“Models of the stable at Bethlehem with the Holy Family—Joseph and Mary and Jesus. People used to have them in their house at Christmas-time and sometimes they’d have larger models on their front lawn.”

She leaned towards me, concentrating. She was genuinely intrigued. “Whadja call ’em?”

“Nativity scenes.”

“Nativity? Never heard that word before.”

Another staff member—a burly young tattooed woman—hurried towards us.

“Hey, Jill, do we have any nativity scenes?” the middle-aged woman asked on my behalf.

Jill bustled past. “Second-last aisle, right at the end,” she said.

“Oh, good. Thank you.” Hopeful, I headed to the second-last aisle and saw snowy model churches—very Central European-looking—and some elaborate plastic angels, one of which was battery-powered to shine brightly. There were a few simple and more dignified wooden girl-angels, their eyes closed, their mouths an “O”, singing. There were no nativity scenes. I picked up a snow-dome containing rustic village huts and shook it, creating a blizzard.

It was time to go. I had to be at work in an hour.

As I drove the few kilometres home—the roads congested with SUVs towing caravans or fishing boats or jet-skis—I thought of St Vinnie’s and stopped there. The shop was decked out for Christmas. I’d have a quick look.

Inside, the shop wasn’t playing Christmas carols. Instead, blaring over the shop’s sound system Olivia Newton-John sang “Let’s Get Physical”. Opposite the entrance was a nicely decorated traditional nativity scene. It was too large for my purposes; more like something people used to have in their front yards. But it was a good sign. At the counter an older man was sorting through a cardboard box filled with coat-hangers. He wore a baseball cap with a rectangular badge that read: Don’t ask me, I just work here. There was no one else around.

“Do you have any nativity scenes?” I pointed to the shop’s display. “Something like that but smaller would be perfect.”

He peered at me over the top of his steel-framed glasses. He frowned and pursed his lips. “I don’t think so, but let me ask the manager.” He ambled to the back of the shop and through a door.

“Let me hear your body talk, body talk,” Olivia yelped urgently. “I wanna hear your body talk!”

The Vinnie’s volunteer came back. “Not at present, but sometimes we get ’em. Maybe drop in again on the off-chance that one’s donated.”

“Okay, thanks.”

I returned to my apartment, ate a sandwich, got changed and drove to work.

I was rostered on a funeral with Baz, my boss, at the nearby crematorium chapel. There wasn’t much to set up and the crem staff were always helpful. Only two staff from the funeral home would be needed. I liked working with Baz. He was kind and fair, a barrel-chested former district rugby player with a crescent-shaped white scar (from somebody’s boot years ago) under one eye on his reddish face.

I washed the hearse. Baz and I loaded in the coffin, topped with a summery flower arrangement. We checked the particulars for the funeral: it was for an elderly lady. I went to the change-room to dress in my white shirt, company tie and dark grey suit.

There was a plain cardboard shoe-box in an unused locker and I thought, why not make my own nativity scene? When I was young I used to enjoy making dioramas from shoe-boxes for my plastic soldiers or model planes.

Baz and I drove to the crem in the hearse. We set the coffin on the plinth at the front of the chapel, liaised with the crem staff so the music and visual eulogy would be ready, and then greeted the mourners as they arrived. When the family’s minister friend began the service, we sat at the back of the chapel. The minister was about my age, mid-fifties, his shaved, gleaming pate contrasting with his greying hipster beard. He wore a dark blue suit and Cuban-heeled ornate leather boots.

Towards the end of the service, the minister invited family and friends to stand to say together the Lord’s Prayer. Baz and I stood too. But the minister had adopted a new version, and he added some odd inflections that left me and the congregation floundering. He solemnly recited, with outstretched arms:

“Universal parental Spirit,

Who’s out in heaven?

You’re so special

And your loving oversight is special

For all time and everywhere.

Please meet our needs, and help us to comfort

Those who need your comfort as you comfort us.

Keep us from selfishness and discrimination,

For your ways are the ways of welcome

With inclusive love,

And dignity for all

Guaranteed everywhere and forever by your gentle strength,

Amen.”

Bewildered, I glanced at Baz. He leaned close to me and whispered, “Guess why the churches are emptying.”

At the start of the final song, Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again”, I opened the chapel’s exit doors and directed mourners towards the refreshment rooms while Baz gave his final condolences to the family. They seemed sweet people. When they’d left, I gathered any tissues or orders of service while Baz talked to the minister.

We were soon on our way, Baz driving. He was cranky for some reason. His face was redder than usual, making the white scar appear paler. His fingers tapped the steering wheel.

“All went well, didn’t it, Baz?” I queried. “Apart from the stuff-up with the Our Father.”

He grunted. “When I met with the family to arrange the funeral they told me they’d organised with the minister—a family friend, supposedly—to conduct the service. No payment to him was mentioned. It was his ‘gift of care’, he’d told them. But just then he told me his celebrant’s fee was three hundred and fifty dollars. He wanted to know when I’d pay. I told him what the family’d said and he told me I should’ve been in contact with him and not taken the family’s advice. They didn’t know his schedule of fees. The arrogant sod!”

Baz gave the steering wheel a thump. “So now I’ve got to contact the family and tell them there’s an additional three hundred and fifty on their bill. They’ll be upset, and it makes my business look dodgy. Ministers!”

I didn’t say anything. Ministers and priests with their fussiness, delays and demands sometimes made organising funerals much harder, not easier. Baz was silent too for a moment.

“I know you’re religious, but I hope you don’t wonder why I’m agnostic!” he said.

Back at work, I changed out of my suit, readied our gear for the next funeral and then shifted some new coffins into the show-room and dusted them. My four-hour shift was finished. The shoe-box came home with me.

In the early evening I telephoned my brother in Hobart. Among other things, I mentioned my difficulties buying a simple nativity scene. His news was rather more surprising.

“In Tasmania,” he told me, “over the past fortnight five churches have had their Christmas displays vandalised, in one case an outdoor nativity scene was fire-bombed.”

“What?”

“Yeah, and on social media some Marxist and Greenie-Anarchist groups applauded the ‘disruptive actions’.”

After dinner, I visited Mum in the Anglican retirement village. On the front lawn, tyre tracks had torn up the grass and the half life-sized plywood profiles of the three wise men bearing gifts towards a stable were gone.

I asked Mum what had happened. She spoke as she made cups of tea.

“Some delinquent ran them down. We’re all very upset.”

“Did anybody get the number-plate?” I asked.

“It happened late last night. People in the front units heard it, but only saw tail-lights racing away.”  

We drank our tea in silence.

Next day, avoiding the mall and going instead to the local newsagency, I bought crayons, watercolour paints and a square of green felt. Among the newsagency’s toys there were small Christmas trees and bags of plastic farm animals. Perfect. At home, I cut out the Holy Family from the front of a religious card and glued the haloed trio onto the inside back of the shoe-box. Above them I shaped one end of the shoe-box to form a pitched roof, drawing outlines of roof-tiles with a red crayon and timber slats on the sides of shoe-box with a brown crayon. I painted the roof red and the walls brown. The crayons’ wax lines resisted the water-colour paint, adding definition. An ochre crayon provided the tromp l’oeil family with a dusty floor.

I placed my nativity scene, using the green felt as a grassy base, on a small table against a wall in my lounge-room and arranged a few animals at the stable’s entry. The tree with a star atop sheltered them all. Once the summer sun had set, I lit a short candle to add its soft glow to the stable, as if giving the family warmth in the cold Bethlehem night. It had a simple beauty in the evening’s half-light.

The cutting, gluing and colouring had been surprisingly enjoyable, re-connecting me with my boyhood when playing was serious business. I felt a thrill of defiance, too: my day’s humble but orthodox construction was almost radical.

One more feature was required. Braving the mall again—hoping it might be quieter in the evening—I went to the bargain shop and bought a large glow-in-the-dark star the size of a party pizza. At home, I set it under a bright lamp for a few hours and then, before going to bed, hung it over my balcony’s brick balustrade to add a ghostly reminder of encouraging guidance to a birth now far distant in time but still capable of causing offence.

Gary Furnell lives in rural New South Wales. His book The Hardest Path is the Easiest: Exploring the Wisdom Literature with Pascal, Burke, Kierkegaard and Chesterton, recently published by Connor Court, is reviewed in this issue