The women

On the night that he is born, Jesus is surrounded by women. The men have shut themselves away in the upper room, anxious, agitated, at a loose end. Though, just perhaps, the youngest of them is brave enough—is permitted—to stay with the women in the communal room they have made their own in this moment.

Mary is supported by the other women. By female relatives of her husband, and the women who served the community as midwives. When her son quite literally descends from her, they take him up and wash his body clean—of blood, and wax, and shit—and lay him on her breast; and all the while at least one holds her hand, feels her rough nails gouge into their wrist. May be one on either side, at each wracked arm.

At some point, they lift her son from her overwhelmed frame; bind him tightly in strips of linen, and lay him in a shallow groove scraped into a stone shelf. And there he will be found, by the menfolk, called by the women from their hiding place, not quite able to believe their eyes. And by shepherds summoned from the fields where they have been raising sacrificial lambs to gaze upon the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And, having seen, shepherds are transformed into angels themselves, messengers running through David’s town, proclaiming news that an heir has been born to his line: that the days of their wait are numbered now.

On the night that he is born, Jesus is surrounded by women, getting on with what needs to be done, going about the most earthy, holy of tasks. Preparing the way for the men to follow. They will always be there throughout his life, whether in the foreground or the background, named in the story and not. But on the night he is born, the women point us to the day on which he dies. For life and death, and new life, and laying down your life for others, are inseparable. Or so they say—so they embody—passing wisdom from generation to generation.