Lowcountry Christmas: Was Jesus black? Was Jesus white? Does anybody really care?
.jpg "The late Dorothy Young poses in her decorated yard on Gum Tree Road on Hilton Head Island in 1988.")
(Editor’s note: This column was originally published on Christmas Day 2013.)
It has been decreed by one of the television blabbermouths that baby Jesus was white.
As opposed, I presume, to black or brown.
We pea brains have always tried to pigeonhole the Messiah, whose birth the world celebrates today. It has always been our bent to shape him into a form that suits ourselves, which, of course, misses the whole point.
Surely, there’s a solid answer to the pigmentation puzzle.
But what difference does it make?
Isn’t that like waving off a lifeboat circling the Titanic because it’s the wrong shade of mauve?
As a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant male, I must admit that it came as a surprise to me the first time I encountered a black Jesus. In my world, Jesus always had the appearance of a Gerber baby, or a blue-eyed hippy.
But my eyes were opened to a whole different world in a Lowcountry yard at the intersection of Wild Horse and Gum Tree roads on Hilton Head Island of yore.
That’s where I first saw a black baby Jesus. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a plaster manger.
As I stood there, pondering this in my heart, I looked up to see another black Jesus. And another and another, all plump and happy in the night fog of fuzzy green and red Christmas lights.
It was in the magical yard of the late Dorothy Young. She liked to make plaster figurines, and she loved to decorate for Christmas. She went hog wild with crèches all over the yard, one in a john boat, another beneath a magnolia. The wise men and shepherds and carolers of Christmas were of all races in Mrs. Young’s court.
Lights were strung so high in the magnolia tree that people came from afar just to marvel at such a wonder. And somewhere in the branches were hidden little speakers that spread great joy with the ancient carols sung by Lou Rawls.
As I got to know Mrs. Young, the pigmentation thing faded, even for those of us who were not in Bethlehem and not plaster figurines. It soon dawned on me that Mrs. Young, an African American from the South Carolina Lowcountry, was just like my white grandmother from the hills and hollers of Natural Bridge, Virginia.
Granny would roll over in her grave to hear me say that — such was the racial divide of her times.
But Mrs. Young doted over her family, her grands, her potted plants, her stove, her kitchen, her yard, her church, her house, her radio, her coffee, her crafts. So did Granny. And they both did it with impish humor, tickled by the parade of everyday characters who came tripping and traipsing through their world.
When Mrs. Young died, something else clicked with me during the Rev. Ben Williams’ funeral sermon at Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church. After the house rocked to all 30 verses of “When We All Get to Heaven,” the old saint we all called “the Rev” told the story of Jesus. His story was the same story I’d heard all my life in our more frozen, white sanctuaries.
On a Sunday before Christmas at a family church in rural Georgia, the pastor made an interesting point about the shepherds who were startled by angels as they watched their flocks by night.
He said that the stable they were told about, as opposed to a grand and gated castle befitting the Messiah, was open to everybody.
Was Jesus white? Was Jesus black? Does anybody really care?
This story was originally published December 24, 2019 at 8:54 AM.
