THE BABOUSHKA
There is a woman and she was wise,
Wofully wise was she.--ROBERT SERVICE.
Now Judea was a Province too, only smaller than Canada, and it was
subject to Rome. In Judea, there was a town called Bethlehem, which
means a house of bread. It must have been that wheat was plentiful.
But this Bethlehem was a small, small place, and the Romans cared not
so much as one finger's fillip that a strange white star waited there
for a little while to light up a birth-bed.
I do not know if the star did wait, but it should have, for this was
the most momentous birth which history has recorded in that, for all
time, it changed the world's ideals. Its influence could only be
weighed with planets in the balances. The baby's name was to be
Dayspring, and Wonderful, and Emmanuel.
... It is well the baby lay in a manger else a bullock might have
crushed him with its hoof...
And having for its central symbols a mother and a baby, this cult of
the Christ can never perish. Its ethics may change; its authority may
wane; its history be impugned, but its symbols are eternal.
Our idea of gift-giving at the Christ-mass-tide has grown up from the
offering made at the manger by the three wise men who came out from the
East, Casper, Melchior, and Balthasar. The myrrh they offered to a
mortal; the gold to a king, the frankincense to God.
Whether to God, the king, or the child, all our gifts should first be
brought to the manger, which is only another way of saying that without
love they avail nothing.
I know a story about these magi, and I will relate it to the children
of the North. It was told to me by Maryam, the ninth girl-child of
Michaelovitch, a Russo-Canadian, in the Province of Saskatchewan. It
is about three wise men and a foolish woman. The woman is called
Baboushka and her heart has become as water. Once, when she was
working in her home, the three wise men passed on their journey to find
the Christ-child and they gave her greeting. "Come with us,
grandmother," they said, "for we have seen His star in the East and we
go to worship Him."
"Surely I will come," said the old woman, "but the oven is heated for
my bread and I must even now bake it. After awhile, I will follow and
find where this star leads."
But she never saw the Christ-child because, when her bread was baked,
the star no longer shone in the sky. Ever since she has been
searching, but has never found Him. She it is who fills the children's
stockings on Christmas Eve, and decks the fir-tree on Christmas morn,
because she hopes to find in some poor child she has fed or clothed the
little Lord Jesus whom she neglected hundreds and hundreds of years
ago. Long before dawn on Christmas Day the children in Russia are
awakened by the cry, "Behold the Baboushka!" and they spring out of bed
on the instant hoping to see her vanish out of the window, but no child
has seen aught save only the gifts she has left behind.
Maryam thinks--indeed, she tells it to the four winds--that the
Christ-child has left Russia and has come to Canada in a big ship with
a shipmaster.
And so Maryam is full of employment, almost every day, knitting mittens
and long white scarves for babies and poor children. You never can
tell, He may be even here on the prairie, the Christ-child whom the
unwise old Baboushka disesteemed hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
You can never tell.