December...

I'm not a religious person, but...

"The manger in which – the story reads – that infant lay so long ago, whose manger was it? Its wood was smoothed, as if in preparation, by the tongues of animals. In a manger where oats or corn are fed, the softer wood erodes in time and the wood grain appears to rise, glistening when a cow has just done eating and the planks are still wet. In a manger full of hay, a horse will often begin to feed at the very center, shaping a hollow, a nest, of grass or alfalfa. But in paintings of the Nativity, the manger has always been consecrated to another need, and the animals have been displaced, uncomplaining, from their meal. By the time the Wise Men come from Herod – so again say all the paintings – the manger has reverted to its proper use. The beasts are nose-deep in their fodder, but they look up, enfolding Magi, mother, and infant in a world where chores are meant to be done, the animals fed, at the same time every day no matter who comes to visit.
There were eyes that would have been hard to gaze upon that Christmas Eve and Christmas morning many years ago. Fear is what the shepherds felt when the good news was announced. But in the eyes of their flock and in the eyes of the ox and ass depicted in every Nativity, there’s the implacable mildness seen even now among the horses when the sun finally warms them. They lie down in the pasture, in the snow, their legs folded beneath them, and steam begins to rise from their sorrel and bay and rose-gray backs. Their repose is a sign of confidence, of safety, and it washes over the person who gets to bring them their hay, which they accept, every morning, as if every morning were Christmas."
--from “The Rural Life” by Verlyn Klinkenborg