news-record.com

When Easter came and went, then Mother’s Day, then the Fourth of July, and the Christmas Nativity was still set up on the table, I had to know.

What was the story?

“Are you getting some old-time religion?” I teased my older sister, Chrissy. “Or just a jump on next Christmas?”

Granted, my sister is an administrator at a Catholic school — both my big sisters are — but leaving a manger up all year seemed a bit ... much.

“I wondered when somebody would ask me about that,” she said, stealing a sideways glance at her daughter Bethy, then 3.

She dropped her voice to a whisper as she slid the glass door to the porch shut to be out of earshot: “Long story.”

First, you should probably meet Bethy, everyone’s favorite kid. She had a way with words, but didn’t rely on words. Her blue eyes, framed by blond curls, could by themselves deliver entire soliloquies.

That was how her older sister, Kate, the most inept Girl Scout cookie saleswoman in her troop’s history, always set sales records just the same. Door to door, Kate would flub her way self-consciously through her sales pitch.

No matter.

Bethy would gaze up at each neighbor with her blue eyes, which communicated something to the effect of, “Kind sir, I’m not asking on my own behalf. My sister has no hope.”

Her other job was to hand them the order form, and each neighbor would invariably sign up for samoas, peanut butter patties or thin mints.

The Christmas that Bethy turned 3, her favorite toy was the manger scene set up in the porch overlooking the lake.

She would take the little lamb down from his nest and tell him the story of the angel and the baby. She would kneel by the manger for hours, rearranging the animals and the straw, the wise men, the shepherds, the drummer boy.

Now, my sister has always been a Christmas person. She’s not the kind to toss the tree to the curb Dec. 26, but more apt to leave it up until February, even though the pine needles make her sneeze.

But even when St. Valentine’s arrived that particular year, Bethy was having a hard time with Christmas withdrawal. The tree, the stockings and the lights weren’t the issue. It was the manger.

“You see,” my sister would try to explain to Bethy, “these things are special. And so that’s why we put them away for next year. If we leave them out all year, then they’re not special.”

Gently, my sister brought the boxes out and prepared to wrap each porcelain figure in newspaper and put it away for next time.

“Do you understand?” my sister asked her. Bethy looked up, nodding, face streaked with gullies of tears.

“OK, Mommy, I understand,” she sobbed, curls shaking violently to indicate the precise opposite, each syllable catching in her throat. “Christmas is over, so we have to put Jesus in a box.”

And that, in a nutshell, is why the manger stayed up through the Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, straight through that part of the year Catholics call “Ordinary Time.” And then some.

Beth turned 24 this fall and got a job as a teacher for the county schools. One of her apartment-warming gifts from my sister was a manger — made of wood, not porcelain, with a copper-winged angel.

She doesn’t leave the manger set up all year — the dog would knock it over. And that is how to care for what is special: Hold on for dear life, regardless of the day or the hour.

The truth? There is no such thing as “ordinary time.”