Growing up, we learned about the Feast of the Epiphany/Feast of the Magi, when the three kings arrived at the stable to greet Jesus, the newborn king, welcoming the swaddled babe with what must go down in history as the three most useless baby gifts of all time. Well, maybe gold would come in useful for an impoverished couple. But frankincense and myrhh??? Whatty-what-what?
The Feast of the Epiphany placed a far second, of course, to Christmas. Unless, of course, you lived in Latin America, where it was the big holiday kahuna.
One year, however, our teacher - Sister Saint Wilhelmina - decided we were going to actually celebrate it. Sister Saint W - as mean a nun as the god of parochial schools ever gifted to a parish school - was highly competitive. Her class had to sell the most magazines during the fall wholesome magazine sale campaign.
Her class had to win whatever contests the St. Dominic Savio Club ran every month - even if if meant cheating to win. Case in point: one year, the contest - which we read about in our monthly St. Dominic Savio Club newsletter - offered some little prize to a classroom that had someone with the initials MC sitting in the second seat of the fifth row. This was in the December newsletter, so the MC was the clever for Merry Christmas, and the second seat-fifth row thang was the clever for 25. Well, lo and behold, the day before Sister Saint W handed out the newsletters, didn't she juggle the seating arrangements around so that Michael Curran was fortuitously seated in the right spot.
I don't remember what the prize was. Maybe we didn't actually get our claim in on time. I suspect that every Catholic school with a cheater or two in its convent had, miraculously, some kid with the initials MC in the right place at the right time.
St. Dominic Savio contest aside, what Sister Saint W most wanted to win was the honor of teachingg the grade that collected the most mission money, money used to support the Propagation of the Faith, an organization that aimed to spread Catholicism throughout the world.
So for the Feast of the Epiphany, Sister Saint W decided it would be a fun thing to dress up like one of the kings and bring an offering of mission money to lay before Baby Jesus in the creche in the convent chapel. The big lure here was getting into the convent, which was never allowed.
We all craved any glimpse into what their life outside the classroom was like, but entering into the convent just never happened. Talk about the holy of holies!
So our glimpses were things like seeing the back of Sister Marie Therese's shaved head when the wind blew her veil up one day when we were out in the schoolyard for recess. Or a half-burned letter sent to one of the nuns from her her brother, which had blown out of the convent trash barrel. Or standing next to the side of the school and looking down the hill into the convent's back yard, which was entirely taken up by a clothesline. On the outside lines of rope, the nuns would pin up their sheets and towels. On the inside lines were their bloomers and corsets. Apparently, they never realized that, from our perch on the hill, we could see their undies. What a thrill!
But actually getting inside of the convent? Never in a million years.
Yet here we were, all decked out like the magi (i.e., in bathrobes and hats), coins in hand, entering inside the secret, sacred walls of the convent.
I remember as clear as day what my get-up was.
I say it was "my" bathrobe because, like so much of my clothing, it was a handme down from my sister Kathleen, for whom it was a handme down from our cousin Barbara. Sometimes the handme downs from Barbara, while always beautiful and elegant, were a bit off. Barbara is 9 years older than I am, so something that was dead-on fashionable in 1950, say, looked a bit out of date by 1959. Like the red spring coat with the nipped in waist. Ugh!
But I loved that bathrobe, and was so proud to be sporting it on that brief march from the school, down the hill to the convent.
Of course, the trip inside was disappointing. All the doors were closed, so we couldn't see much of anything of the nuns' actual living quarters. We were just funneled into the chapel, left our mission money gifts in the basket that Sister Saint W had in front of the manger, and rushed back out the door. Fifty kids run through in about two minutes.
I can't remmeber what the take from the Gift of the Magis parade was. My contribution was probably a dime. Some spoiler suckup - looking at you, Gerald N! - probably got a buck or two from his mother to toss in the basket.
Happy Feast of the Epiphany!
(Let's not go anywhere near the more modern meaning of January 6th...)
1 comment:
I’ll trade you your Sister W for my Sister Rose Augusta!
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