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| This is a stable |
Every Christmas we're inundated with comments from the pulpit, websites and blogs about how awful it was that Baby Jesus was "born in a smelly stable", "born among filth", "born in a filthy stable", "born in a really cold dank smelly stable". I just want to jump up and cry, "You've never even been in a barn, have you?"
It's evident that many of these priests and people never experienced the sweetness of a clean stable so how do they know what a barn is like? Several decades of my life were spent in barns—hunter and show barns, Thoroughbred racehorse barns, racetrack barns, sales barns, and Thoroughbred breeding and training farms.
In reality, people do keep their barns sparkling clean. Stables are cleaned every morning before these priests/people even get up or arrive at their Chancery office. Stalls are raked down to the red clay after any dirty straw is pitch-forked out, powdered lime is sprinkled to dry out wet spots, aisles are raked, swept and damped down with Lysol. Before horses are put up for the evening, their stalls are bedded deep in sweet, clean, luxurious, soft, yellow straw with piles of hay for the horses to munch on, fresh water in a clean rubber bucket, oats in a rubber tub hanging in the corner. Their leather halters, always removed after putting horses in the stall, gleam from daily cleaning, brass nameplates always polished.
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| This is a stall |
Certainly the Bethlehem innkeeper had the necessary implements and supplies to keep his stable or cave clean. And certainly St Joseph made sure everything was spotless for the Blessed Mother. He didn't just walk in and fall asleep and leave her to deliver Jesus without making sure everything was in perfect order. In reality, people do think of these things.
In addition, horse and cow manure is not unclean like that of cats and dogs. Farm animals' manure is used to fertilize hay fields, vegetable and flower gardens, mushroom farms. All the glorious vegetables one buys from an Amish market come from massive gardens fertilized with cow and horse manure. The manure of horses bedded in straw (not sawdust or shavings) is like gold for farmers.
There are farmers in almost every parish unless it's in the middle of a large city - and even then most large cities have race tracks with owners, trainers, jockeys, grooms, exercise riders - and in stating that "stables are filthy", priests are insulting all these people. Did they never think of that?
Would they insult women by preaching that "houses are filthy, dank and smelly" and "no fit place for Baby Jesus"? Or insult doctors by saying "no hospital is fit for Baby Jesus to be born in" because of hospital diseases - influenza, Norovirus, resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Like, "How horrible for Baby Jesus. He was born in a filthy smelly HOSPITAL! How DIGUSTING!"
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| This is a barn (A stable can be humble like the one in Bethlehem, or like the one pictured above but they're all cleaned in the same way.) |
There is nothing like an early morning in the barn, drinking coffee, eating doughnuts, talking to exercise riders, jockeys, grooms, owners and trainers—and most of all seeing the beautiful shining horses groomed to perfection stamping and nickering with their breath showing on a cold morning galloping on the track after sleeping a calm night in a cozy, warm, clean, sweet-smelling peaceful barn—the perfect place for Baby Jesus to be born.
After growing up in the city with "clean your room, you don't live in a barn", this is a refreshing and enlightening perspective.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this. My grandfather's barn was cleaner than many people's houses.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post. Another things that bothers me is hearing/reading about Baby Jesus being "wrapped in rags". Oh, come ON! Although St. Joseph and the Blessed Mother may not have been the wealthiest of folks, even they didn't have to wrap their Child in rags! "Swaddling clothes", yes, I'm fine with that. DH and I swaddled our own babies. We used blankets, not RAGS. I am sure that St. Joseph, being the head of the Holy Family, would have seen fit that proper swaddling cloths were available, perhaps even made by the Blessed Mother's very own loving hands. Rags, indeed!
ReplyDeleteMost stables don't look like this one. The stable that Jesus was bone in had oxen not
ReplyDeletehigh bred horses. Now I for one do like cow breath. Oxen seem pretty sweet.
I doubt that the stable of Bethlehem looked like this when the Holy Family got there.
Learning
Anonymous...seriously? You don't understand??? The point of the article is not that the stable in Bethlehem looked like Calumet Farm's barn. The point is that any barn, no matter how humble or how magnificent can be CLEAN, not smelly and filthy like so many priests say.
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