Brown Young

BROWN YOUNG

By Margaret Macpherson

“It’s her. It’s her.”

My kindergarten daughter dances foot to foot, her boots leaving wet puddles on the Value Village floor. I look to the shelves of Christmas bric-a-brac, scanning for the source of her joy.

It is neither the chipped porcelain Santas nor the sad wire angels that have caused my shy daughter’s outburst. No, it’s a little figurine, brown skinned, black haired, bare breasted. It’s a hula dancer. At the base of the statue are the words Aloha. 

Freya grabs the figurine and speaks directly to it, her voice fierce with five-year-old love: “Firgin, she says, “I knew I’d find you.  Can we bring her home, Mom? Can we? Please?” 

Firgin? I ask.

“Yes,’ replies Freya, clutching figurine to her chest. “She’s supposed to be in the barn. With the baby Jesus.”    

What?

 It’s then she starts to sing -“Brown young Firgin, Mother and child . . . ,”  and I get it.

Firgin it became and Firgin it remained for years. In fact Firgin became a watchword in our household, a stand-in for the one who does the Christmas grunt work. 

A Firgin is the person who goes downstairs and finds the Christmas tree stand behind all the camping equipment and lugs up the boxes of ancient ornament and moves the furniture to make room for the tree.   

You’re a Firgin when you put up the Christmas lights at 20 below and even run to the hardware store when one of the burnt-out lights causes the whole string to short circuit. Firgin always remembers to put away the ladder.

Firgin is anyone.  He is the person standing in line at the post office while the woman in front dithers about whether to send her parcel to England regular or express post. Firgin might even lean in to give the women – a pensioner, of course -- the extra five bucks to ensure that parcel of handmade dishcloths and home baking lands in the lap of the lonely niece in time for the big day.

He or she is the worker bee of Christmas. She’s the one who puts her hand inside the gaping hole of the raw turkey to extract that watery pouch of gizzards and guts.  She boils the organs up with a bit of water, and then feeds them to the cat. She also cleans up the mess when the cat pukes on the hardwood floors.  She’s been known to extract tinsel from the cat’s bum.

Firgin is not afraid of hard work. In fact, she often works Christmas day because either she has no kids and people assume she will, or because she’s Muslin or Hindu and it’s assumed there will be no gift opening on Christmas morning.

Firgin is the person one who sweeps the floors after the Mall closes late on Christmas Eve. He works the till at the convenience store, letting unhoused people stay inside longer then they should when it’s a cold December.

Firgin does not draw attention to any of these tasks. She is the volunteer driver for Renfrew Family services delivering lumpy gifts on dark backroads, or the old vet behind the salvation army kettle, ringing his bell incessantly, meeting people with his rheumy eyes, reminding us … there but for the grace of God.

As I unpack my crèche this season, I take the brittle tissue paper from the little hula dancer, purchased those many years ago. She was discovered by a five-year-old who, at 30, no longer sings the old hymns.

Yet this lowly Firgin has become a central player in our Christmas nativity.  I imagine her at the heart of all things, standing at the right hand of Mary, in front of Joseph, who always looks a little confused and befuddled. 

They’re in a cowshed. Mary has just given birth and it’s Firgin who is there, brown, young Firgin, sleeves rolled up, forearms knotted with muscles. She has to be strong because she’s just caught a baby.  She has to be soft because she’s just caught a baby.

She wipes the slime from the eyes of the baby Jesus, wraps his body in an old linen cloth, and readies the makeshift cradle in the trough. She urges Mary to push once more, presses down on her abdomen, firmly but softly too.  She’s doing what needs to be done and she’s doing it joyfully, hula skirt swaying and tilting amid the straw, thick with cow dung and sheep turds.

She is Firgin.

I place the little hula dancer nearest the manger, the least among many, but always, always, the closest to God.