“And wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn,” the teenaged girl read aloud to her 5-year-old sister. “See, honey?” She pointed to a painting of the Nativity by Fra Angelico in the book on her lap. “That’s just what the children were doing at church. They were acting out the Christmas story. Remember?”
A scornful look passed over the face of the child, and she burst out: “She’s in the second grade and I’m glad because she probably has to do boring math!”
“What?” asked the older girl, laughing out loud. “Who has to do boring math? What does that have to do with Christmas?”
The little girl pointed to the heavenly host depicted in the painting. “It has to do,” she said grimly, “with That Angel.”
It emerged that one of the tinsel-haloed angels at our church’s Christmas pageant, a small friend of the family, had, unbeknownst to the rest of us, said “Duh” to our youngest.
“I asked her if she wanted to play orphans and fairies,” our child explained, “and she said, ‘Duh!’ ”
Apparently the two children had soon gone on to play orphans and fairies, but the insult remained unanswered and clearly it still smarted.
Now the girl picked up the Nativity book and began marching around, proclaiming: “I’m going read about That Angel and how the Church says she’s mean!”
“Honey, the Church doesn’t–”
“And she has to do all the boring math and she’s in the second grade!”
“She’s not, she’s only a year older–”
Things quickly calmed down, but the incident was a reminder of the amusing combustibility of mixed-generation parties. That children have interactions unseen by adults may be as obvious as the nutmeg on eggnog, but, it’s easy to forget as families gather, adults congregate over drinks, and the children disperse.
Yet just as we grown-ups are droning on about our earnest preoccupations, or bantering with extreme vivacity and wittiness, depending, so too the children are taking each other’s measure and having little run-ins.
A friend who has an unusually large number of relatives gained insights into this a few Christmases ago. Given the size of his extended family — each of his half-dozen siblings has a half-dozen children — the week between Christmas and New Year’s is always a mob scene.
One year, my friend had the brilliant idea of equipping every niece and nephew over the age of 4 with a disposable camera. The results were a revelation.
The parties he’d attended looked almost unrecognizable from a child’s-eye perspective. Instead of a roomful of adults, relating as peers, the photographs showed a roomful of children moving about through a forest of adult torsos and legs that seemed no more important to the social dynamic than the trunks of trees.
Down there, unseen by grown-ups, was a whole world of orphans and fairies and insults! So, it turned out, was the answer to the mystery of who had swiped that box of cordial-filled Christmas chocolates …
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
