ECONOGAL

 Children’s Christmas books are among my favorite gifts to give. Prolific authors like Jan Brett and Mercer Meyer and even Lemony Snicket have written Christmas themed books. There are also books such as Christmas Counting by Lynn Reiser and alphabet books such as B is for Bethlehem by Isabel Wilner. But my favorite tale is If You’re Missing Baby Jesus: A True Story that Embraces the Spirit of Christmas by Jean Gietzen with illustrations by Lila Rose Kennedy.

The setting for If You’re Missing Baby Jesus is a small oil field town of North Dakota in the early 1940s. A family has lost their nativity in moving from one small town to another while following work through the oil patch. So the mother buys a new nativity set at the local dime store. Once the nativity set is unpacked, the family discovers a major error. The set contains two figurines of the baby Jesus.

Family Reaction

The members of the family differ in their reaction to the extra baby Jesus. The father is quite pragmatic. He realizes the set that is missing baby Jesus could be anywhere in the country. The children like having twin babies in the manger. But the mother is adamant that they find the proper home for the extra figurine.

Thus a sign is displayed by the remaining nativity sets stating If You’re Missing Baby Jesus Call 7162. (For those of you too young to remember or in big cities, small towns on the Plains only needed four or five numbers dialed as late as the 1990s.) As Christmas draws closer, the mother becomes more anxious that the extra baby Jesus has not been claimed. Finally, on Christmas Eve she sends the father and children down to the store to see if any nativity sets remain.

The sets are all sold. But upon returning home, both the mother and baby Jesus are missing. Gietzen presents the true meaning of Christmas in the ensuing pages. The children embrace a chance to help others. Even the father loses his grumpiness and creates some miracles of his own.

I love this simple story. I have given many copies away to the younger generations in my family. If You’re Missing Baby Jesus is a wonderful story to read aloud to children during the Christmas season. Buy a copy this Christmas season and enjoy sharing the story with the little ones in your family.