The Magi

The Magi are one of our family traditions that the Lone Star Baby is just learning about this year, since she was too little to get around much last Christmas. We have a little Nativity scene that we set up on a bookshelf in the living room during the Christmas season. We set up the stable and put in Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and angels and sheep and a donkey and a cow. We save the Baby Jesus out and put Him in on Christmas Eve. The best part is the Magi, though. We set them up down the hall...Caspar with his camel, Melchior with his black horse and Balthazar with his elephant...and a weird little stuffed camel toy that doesn't really go with the set but which follows them like a stray (sometimes Spiderman and Hulk follow them, too, and then Lone Star Pa and I have to have a little talk). Every day, the Lone Star Girl (and the Lone Star Baby now) moves them one step closer to the bookshelf Bethlehem. They travel until the Feast of Epiphany, when they arrive to give the Christ Child their odd gifts. I love this tradition and so does the Lone Star Girl. Needless to say, there was a lot that the Lone Star Baby was loving about the Nativity scene today. The Lone Star Girl kept trying to take the pieces away from her and put them back in their right places but I let her play with them...how else will she learn the magic? When I was nursing the Lone Star Baby to sleep tonight, Lone Star Pa poked his head into the bedroom and asked why there were only two Wise Men. I held up the Lone Star Baby's hand, in which she clutched Balthazar, and he smiled. They'll all make it to Bethlehem eventually.