First Sunday of Advent: Where is Baby Jesus?

One of my favorite Christmas carols is "People Look East" because it calls forth images of hearth and home and Christmas anticipation. This afternoon, as I unpacked a Fontanini nativity while listening to the carol, I was reminded how the repeated theme of looking ahead, of seeking and preparing, is such an integral part of an Italian presepio, or nativity scene.

A traditional presepio in Italy includes so much more than the figures of Joseph, Mary, and the infant Jesus. There is often a water feature, and dramatic lighting mimics the transition from day to night and back again. There are mountains, valleys, caves. Entire villages are constructed, as are farm fields and barns. There are shepherds and villagers and children. It is a busy scene, incredibly elaborate and detailed, so much so that it takes a few minutes to even find the infant Jesus. He is not front and center, as one would expect, but hidden.

The fact he is not immediately spotted is precisely the point.

In the nativity story, everyone is looking: the Wise Men studied the star to guide them, the shepherds looked for the babe in a manger, and even Joseph searched for shelter as one Inn after another closed its doors. And in a presepio, the viewer is invited into the tableau and, like the shepherds and villagers and children, is meant to look for Jesus, to seek him out, to look up and down and around the villages and fields and barns until he is found.

As we journey into Advent, that is the theme we are living: one of seeking, for a presepio does not depict a legendary event from ancient Palestine; instead, it is a mirror of the known world today reminding us to look for Christ in our everyday life. In our homes. At church. Among crowds and the homeless. Even amidst our busyness.

He is hidden in plain sight, waiting for you to find him.

(The following photos were taken last October in Naples, Italy on Via San Gregorio Armeno, known as the Christmas Alley.

This pedestrian street in Naples' historic center is filled with artisan workshops and hundreds of nativity scenes, each one more elaborate than the next. The nativities are busy, meant to reflect everyday life, and as your eyes wander over the scenes the question arises: Where is baby Jesus?)