The Good Night in Spain
If you were a child in Spain, you would not be talking of Christmas trees in the late December days, but ofnavidades, or “nativities.” These are tiny models of a scene supposed to be Bethlehem. Some of them are very simple, made of cardboard, colored paper, bits of stone and sand. On one side is a hill, built up of paper or plaster, and in the side of it is the cave to which the gentle cattle were used to come for food and shelter. By its crude match-wood manger stand or sit little figures of the Holy Family. Often these are modelled from beautiful designs, the work of famous artists who put their highest skill into creating the tiny images of the mother and the Holy Child. Outside the cave stand the patient oxen, and perhaps the donkey upon which the Infant Christ is to be carried out of the reach of Herod. Overhead sparkles a shining star. Some of these simple “nativities” can be bought for a few cents. Others made of better materials, or with greater care, and with many figures, are more costly. These have, besides the Holy Family, perhaps, a fire of ruddy tinfoil around which shepherds gather, looking, in their straight brown cloaks, as if they might have stepped from your Noah’s ark, and back of them, on a hillside of green cloth, little white wool lambs feed quietly. In still another you may even see a smuggler with a slouch hat pulled down over his eyes, hiding with a load of tobacco behind a paper rock to leave the road free for the Three Kings who in all their tinsel go journeying to worship the Holy Child. The roads arerough with bits of cork, the river is a strip of glass, and the bridge over which the camels of the Wise Men pass is clearly of paper stone; the rabbit hiding in the evergreens is quite as large as the donkey saddled for the flight into Egypt; but in the magic of “the Holy Night” all seem to be real, to live and feel, so natural and tender is the children’s faith in these simple “nativities,” which are repeated on a larger scale in all the churches.
On Christmas Eve, or the Good Night, as the Spanish children say, every one must go to the church for the midnight mass, and of course no one goes to bed before that. Early in the dusk the toy dealers bring their booths and flaming naphtha torches to the village plaza, and the children swarm around them like flies to sweets. All the week before groups of these children have been going from door to door at night singing to familiar tunes ballads which tell the story of the Nativity, and he is a poor Spaniard who cannot find some small coins for the band of singers. On Holy Night, too, after they have made the small round of the toy-dealers’ stands, they go to each other’s houses to look at the different nativities and sing one carol after another in which a single voice carries a verse, remembered or made up at the time, and the others join in the refrain while two of them dance. At the end of each verse the two whose turn it has been to dance go up to the nativity with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, open wide their little arms and fall on their knees, with the exclamation “For Thee.” In some places the children will instead carry a nativity into the plaza, singing carols in which every one joins.
Woman with baby
One such carol is this lullaby:—
“The Baby Child of Mary,Now cradle He has none;His father is a carpenterAnd he shall make Him one.His father is a carpenterAnd he shall make Him one.“The Lady, good St. Anna,The Lord, St. Joachim,They rock the Baby’s cradleThat sleep may come to Him.They rock the Baby’s cradleThat sleep may come to Him.“Then sleep thou, too, my baby,My little heart so dear;The Virgin is beside thee,The Son of God is near.The Virgin is beside thee,The Son of God is near.”
“The Baby Child of Mary,Now cradle He has none;His father is a carpenterAnd he shall make Him one.His father is a carpenterAnd he shall make Him one.“The Lady, good St. Anna,The Lord, St. Joachim,They rock the Baby’s cradleThat sleep may come to Him.They rock the Baby’s cradleThat sleep may come to Him.“Then sleep thou, too, my baby,My little heart so dear;The Virgin is beside thee,The Son of God is near.The Virgin is beside thee,The Son of God is near.”
“The Baby Child of Mary,Now cradle He has none;His father is a carpenterAnd he shall make Him one.His father is a carpenterAnd he shall make Him one.
“The Baby Child of Mary,
Now cradle He has none;
His father is a carpenter
And he shall make Him one.
His father is a carpenter
And he shall make Him one.
“The Lady, good St. Anna,The Lord, St. Joachim,They rock the Baby’s cradleThat sleep may come to Him.They rock the Baby’s cradleThat sleep may come to Him.
“The Lady, good St. Anna,
The Lord, St. Joachim,
They rock the Baby’s cradle
That sleep may come to Him.
They rock the Baby’s cradle
That sleep may come to Him.
“Then sleep thou, too, my baby,My little heart so dear;The Virgin is beside thee,The Son of God is near.The Virgin is beside thee,The Son of God is near.”
“Then sleep thou, too, my baby,
My little heart so dear;
The Virgin is beside thee,
The Son of God is near.
The Virgin is beside thee,
The Son of God is near.”