I’m sorry to disturb you on this important morning, so I’ll get right to what this is all about.

As I navigated the streets of Waterville, Winslow, Oakland and a bit of Hallowell this past week, this is what I saw.

It’s not an accurate count, because the darkness falls so early these days, and I wanted to see as many brightly-lit displays as I could.

Sometimes, I get lost down on the streets of the South End, and up around High Street and down past Ticonic to Cool and Burleigh, until I find her smiling face in the window — happy that I’m still alive.

So far I’ve counted 23 inflated Santas, mostly lighted, and some standing there. So far I’ve counted 20 snowmen, countless reindeers, circus clowns, and Disney characters not usually related to Christmas, but cheerful nonetheless.

Perhaps I missed your street in the early darkness. I’m sorry.

So, there’s another snowman, and yet another Santa — so many Santas. This one is 6 or 7 feet tall, surrounded by wire reindeers and blue lights. So many Santas.

I must include the lighted trees, now warmed by the heat of light, free of caterpillars and autumn leaves, and this morning, heavy with snow.

Here I park on Johnson Heights and I check my list. What is it I’m searching for? Oh, yes. The crèches.

Where are the crèches? There are no creches on my list. My heart is warmed by the lights, the red and green displays, the 6-foot glowering Grinches, endless Santas and elves, but no outdoor crèches.

My aging heart and childhood soul wonders, where are the crèches? I’m sure there’s one I’ve missed. I’ll keep searching.

It’s cold out here now, not as cold as it was in that biblical stable, or cave or hillside in Bethlehem that night.

It’s safe to say it’s not as cold as along our Southern borders, where 1,500 freezing bodies a day — a day, mind you — keep coming, are huddled this holy night.

This is where I start preaching.

MSNBC cameras light the night, and we’re shown the scenes of human beings down there where those 1,500 people a day wading across the Rio Grande, from Mexico into El Paso, Texas — 1,500.

I spotted one or two, maybe more, young pregnant women, some with husbands and other children, clutching soiled, wet blankets around them.

Which one, I wonder, of those women down there — having struggled across that river, still bleeding from the thorns of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala — will find a warm space, against a fence, or in wet cardboard boxes and blankets, to deliver their babies?

These young women were raised to believe in the merciful Jesus. I search the faces of the men around them. Is that Jesus among them?

We can be sure that there was, as written in the Gospel of Luke, no warm crèche, no three kings bearing gold, frankincense and myrrh, when this hunted, cold, Jewish family just needed hot soup and a piece of bread.

There were no shepherds, or wood to burn, no angel hovering over them in the cave where Myriam gave birth to Yeshua Ben Yosef. Oh, you changed their names? Never mind.

I don’t have to remind any of you about that last night, or this morning and mornings to come, where Ukrainian women of many faiths gave birth under fire from “massive” attacks with bullets, rockets and cannons.

I scan those faces and I ask, “Where are the crèches?”

Isn’t that what this night is all about, crèches and the quite possibly the birth of Yeshua Ben Yosef? Just asking.

Merry Christmas?

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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