The story of the Christmas Cow

As the excitement and understanding of Christmas grows, it dawned on me the other day that perhaps we should be teaching Toby about the real origin of Christmas. After all, it’s not all about Frosty and Rudolph and the big bearded man with presents. As I’ve mentioned before, Rob is the religious one in our family, but some things are important, and of all the religious stories, this is one I felt somewhat comfortable teaching him. How badly could I screw it up?

It took a bit of searching but finally I found him a short and colourful book that explains the nativity story in plain English. AND there was a picture of a cow on the front. When we got home from daycare that day I told Toby that I had a new book for him (he loves books) and he got very excited. He got even MORE excited when he saw the cow on the front and eagerly sat down to read it, flipping each page to get to the part where the cow is introduced.

It’s a long time to wait for an impatient-cow-obsessed-toddler; Mary and Joseph were introduced, the shepherds in the field were introduced (sheep are not quite as enthralling as cows), the angel came down, Mary found out she was pregnant, she and Joseph had the “oh shit” conversation, they traveled to Bethlehem, they tried to find a hotel and THEN (and ONLY then) did they end up in a barn with the Christmas Cow.

Needless to say, I wasn’t entirely sure how much of the actual story he absorbed. (Although it was a BIT of a relief that the word “virgin” slipped past his inquisitive mind unnoticed…) Later on that day when we told Daddy about the new book Toby introduced it as the story of “the cow and the baby Jay-Zee”.

“No, Toby, the baby’s name was JE-SUS, not Jay-Zee” (how does he know who Jay-zee is?!?)

“Yeah. Jay-zee!” he replied, grinning. This was the start of a dangerous game…

I corrected him one more time and then decided to drop it. I would UTTERLY fail in my quest to teach my son a simple bible story if the end result was his insistence on referring to Jesus as Jay-Zee.

I thought maybe that was the end of the whole story and my contribution to a more wholesome Christmas, until this morning (a week later) when he brought it up again on the way to daycare.

“So…the baby Jesus…” he started musing out loud to himself in the car. (He had obviously been THINKING about this…)

“Yes, what about him?”

“The baby Jesus…his mommy was Mary?”

“Yes,” I encouraged, “And he was born on Christmas day which is why we celebrate Christmas every year.”

Toby thought about this for a bit and then expanded on the story,

“So the baby Jesus was born and his mommy is Mary. And there was a COW and he had to lie down in HAY in a barn.”

“That’s RIGHT, Toby!” I said impressed but still wondering where this was all going…

Skeptically, Toby finally got to his point, “OK…well…but WHO is JOE?!!?!?”

After correcting him on the name “Joseph” I smiled at our mutual accomplishment.

We’re making progress…