My wife has painted three ceramic nativity sets. The unpainted sets are sold by a seller in Ohio who has them listed on EBay. When the box comes in the mail, we carefully unwrap each of the twenty-two characters that are shrouded in newspaper. The magi, Joseph and Mary, the animals, even baby Jesus, are pure white. But they don’t stay monochromatic for long.

My wife has a work bench where she paints like a non-unionized elf. Perched on her stool with her music playing in the background; she uses a magnifying ring light that allows her to see all the details of each piece without straining her eyes. Next to her is a vase full of brushes of all shapes and sizes, and a mug of muddy colored water.

She also has more than thirty bottles of paint. But she rarely uses paint directly from the bottles; she prefers to mix them into her own unique blends. In this way each of the sets differ from the other. The beauty of each piece is brought to life by her painstaking and loving attention to every detail.

It takes her months to finish the entire set; I’ve estimated that each set takes more than one hundred hours to complete. We have one of the sets, and our married daughters and their husbands have the other two. When our youngest daughter gets married someday, I know that she will start working on the fourth set. Last year when she gave a set to our oldest daughter, my son-in-law described them perfectly with one word: heirlooms.

My wife has been to the near east a couple of times and seen first hand how the locals still adorn their camels with jewels and brightly colored tapestries. This is why she turns their cloaks royal purple, and their camels are gilded with gold and silver. Each of her ceramic camels looks like a bling bling ride for an ancient VIP.  

This is why the magi are my favorite pieces. But before you write me a comment about them not being there in Bethlehem on the day that Jesus was born, I know its not historically accurate. They actually showed up almost two years after His birth, and why Herod “slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and in all its environs, from two years old and under” (Matthew 2:16)  

Of course, at the center of the scene is Jesus. He is lying in a food trough under the Herald Angel who is wired to the wall above Him. This angel was the one who appeared to the frightened shepherds and told them “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11)

Another thing my wife has noticed on her trips to the near east, is that most of the babies from that part of the world don’t look much like the baby Jesus dolls in the creches of most American towns and cities.  

This is why my wife takes great pains in getting His skin the right color; or more precisely, not getting His skin color wrong. While there is no way to know exactly what shade His skin was, one thing we know for sure is that Jesus’ skin is not that pure ceramic white that showed up in the box from Ohio.

When it comes time for her to paint the baby Jesus, she really takes her time. She squeezes out a puddle of flesh colored paint onto her pallet, and then carefully swirls in different colors that look like drizzles of flavored syrup on ice cream. Next, she mixes and blends until her eyes perceive a hue that might just look like a baby born more than five thousand miles east of New York.

Like many of you, I grew up celebrating Christmas amid images of red-nosed reindeer, green-Grinches, and blue-eyed Jesus. And as a descendant of northern Europeans, it’s been a challenge at times to accept the fact that the colors of my Christmas past don’t always match the colors of the first Christmas.

The Savior who needed swaddling. The Savior who understands our weakness, temptations, and even our doubts. Perhaps this is why the story never gets old. God comes to earth as a brown-eyed baby who grew up in a working class home, with family pedigree that included a Palestinian prostitute named Rahab, and a destitute widow from Edom named Ruth. (Matthew 1:5)

“Great joy for all people.” All people. Yes, that’s the message. Poor people, educated people, rich people, weak people, pretty people, homeless people. All people.

Joy to the world. The whole world. Joy to Asians, Europeans, Africans, Americas, Australians, and even those shivering scientists celebrating in Antarctica. Merry Christmas.

Jeff Ell’s book Ruth Uncensored is available on Kindle and Amazon.