RIVER CITY JOURNAL: JUST WHEN YOU THINK YOU KNOW ALL THE NATIVITY STORIES...

I've been looking everywhere for answers to Jean Bell Mosley's questions in her touching column last Sunday about swaddling clothes.

In Kelo Valley where I grew up, no one ever said much about swaddling clothes around young boys. Of course, those were the days when women weren't "pregnant." They were "carrying a baby."

While I don't know nothin' about swaddlin' no babies, I do know something about mangers.

Our barn was constructed in the 1800s, according to the date carved into one of the main oak beams. And it had a manger. In the winter, cattle were fed hay that had to be thrown into the manger from the loft.

I always thought it was pretty special to have a barn with a manger. Our farm neighbors had barns, but most of those barns didn't have mangers. Those barns were used for storage or for keeping livestock out of winter's bitter wind or for calving or for milking.

If you think a manger, particularly a manger constructed from rough-sawn lumber, might be a splintery place to put a newborn baby, think again. Have you ever been licked by a cow? Their tongues are like sandpaper. After a manger has been used for a while, the bottoms and sides of the manger are as slick as glass. Our manger had been used for nearly a century, so it was velvety smooth. Any baby would have liked sleeping in our manger -- except when hungry cows were being fed, of course.

I was about to give up on my search for information about where those swaddling clothes, the ones Mary used, might have come from.

Then I found what I was looking for.

What you are about to read isn't exactly considered Sacred Scripture.

Yet.

The source ... ummm ... let's call it the Gospel according to St. Joe.

It goes something like this (using the New Contemporary Modern Revised Standard Version):

Chapter One

1 And when the time for the census (used to levy taxes) was upon them, Joseph went with Mary, his bride-to-be, to Bethlehem, because you had to be counted in your hometown. If you moved away for a better job or to avoid the dreaded Bethlehem allergies, you still had to go back for the census. This whole census business was dreamed up by some government bureaucrat in Rome, but what could you expect from those slackers?

2 Joseph was looking forward to seeing all his relatives again. His Aunt Margaret made the best fig pie he had ever tasted. And Aunt Margaret always did dote on Joseph.

3 Mary was both excited and frightened. She knew enough about Joseph's family to realize they were warm and loving people. But let's face it: Meeting the in-laws for the first time isn't always the happiest moment in a young girl's life.

4 Besides, Mary had other reasons for concern. First there was that visit from that angel. She had tried to understand what he was saying, but it was terribly confusing. Then, sure enough, Mary found herself carrying a baby.

5 Sure, Mary had been a little flirt in the third grade. But after that long talk with the school counselor and all those stern looks from Rabbi Abram, she settled down and became the model of virtue. Goodness knows young girls needed every model they could find, what with all those floozies hanging around the well where you had to go get water every day.

6 Joseph was worried about Mary not about her pregnancy. Like most men, he knew a whole lot more about tools than he would ever comprehend about women. He tried real hard to understand what Mary had said about that angel, and he kept asking more and more questions.

Chapter Two

1 By the time Mary and Joseph got to Bethlehem, it was past suppertime, thanks to that wrong turn they took just south of Jerusalem. And, as you might have guessed, Joseph wouldn't stop and ask directions. They were afraid all the good rooms would be rented out. They didn't have reservations or anything.

2 Sure enough, the desk clerk at the Bethlehem Cedar Lodge didn't have good news. The lodge had a census weekend special that included free admission to the casino docked over on the Dead Sea.

3 But, as fate would have it, Joseph and Mary ran into a farmer who said they would be welcome at his stable. They were bone tired, so they decided to sleep with the animals.

4 Which was a good thing, because Mary's water broke, and she was having contractions about every four minutes.

5 Joseph did just what you might expect: He panicked.

6 "You want me to do what?" he exclaimed over and over.

7 "You have to do this, Joseph," Mary said. "There's simply no one else."

Chapter Three

1 So they arranged what few belongings they had brought with them in the stable to make ready for giving birth. Mary was pleased to see that the manger had been well used and was as smooth to the touch as any of Joseph's fine pieces of furniture that he planed and smoothed and rubbed to a sheen.

2 When Mary delivered her baby, she was overcome with emotion, as was Joseph, who said, "Look. It's a boy."

3 Joseph's face fell, though, when he realized they had nothing with them in which to wrap the tiny infant.

4 Mary said, "Don't worry, Joseph, I have just the thing."

5 And the mother of Jesus, as the angel had said he was to be named, reached into the bundle of clothes she had brought along for the trip.

Chapter Four

1 One of the reasons Mary had been looking forward to the trip to Bethlehem was because her cousin, Naomi, lived there. For miles and miles around, Naomi was known as the best seamstress to be found. Mary had scrimped and saved enough to buy some of the finest linen. The weave was perfect which is what Mary had been looking for. She wanted so much for Naomi to use this fine linen to make her a wedding dress.

2 (And, as it was foretold to Mary, she would live to see her firstborn son laid in a tomb, wrapped in fine linen.)

3 So Mary and Joseph tore the unblemished linen, intended for a bride, into strips to be used as swaddling clothes for the babe.

4 And after the baby was wrapped in the cloth, Mary took Jesus to her breast and gave him his first taste of the milk of life, and she cooed to him, and she laid him in the manger where he fell fast asleep.

5 Jesus even slept through all the commotion when a bunch of angels blasting away on trumpets -- you would have thought they were from Jericho -- came by with all those rowdy shepherds. But Mary didn't mind. And Joseph didn't mind.

6 And Joseph said, "I'm sorry about your wedding dress." And he really meant it.

7 To which Mary replied, with a smile that could turn even a hard-nosed census taker into a rather likable fellow, "I'm not. I'm not sorry at all."

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.