GODSTUFF:

HEY! UNTO YOU A CHILD IS BORN . . . AND HE’S NOT SANTA’S COUSIN

What are we waiting for?

On Christmas Eve, I mean.

Is it for Santa Claus that we wait?

For the light to return, for a savior to arrive?

Or are we waiting for St. Nicholas’ cousin Jesus to show up so we can all get birthday presents?

That’s what a group of kindergartners told me Friday morning when I quizzed them about the Christmas story.

“It’s about sharing and spending time with your family,” Efrain, 6, said.

“You go to bed and Santa goes up all the chimneys and you wake up and there are presents … and then you spend time with your family and watch TV,” said David, who held up five fingers when I asked him how old he was.

When I motioned to the creche (and the Santa Claus and snowman figurines) I’d brought with me and asked David if he knew what they were, he looked at the manger and proclaimed, “A house.”

Pointing a chubby finger at the Magi (aka the Three Wise Men or the Three Kings), David said, proudly, “The Kings!”

Yes!

How about this person — who’s he? I asked, meaning the baby in the straw.

Blank stares all around, and then shy Javier piped up.

“Jesus?” he said in a whisper so low I had to lean in to hear it, except he pronounced it, “Hey-soos.”

Yes, that’s right. And who is Jesus?

“Not Santa,” Efrain said.

Are Santa and Jesus related? I asked.

“Cousins,” David said.

Now, far be it from me to criticize a bunch of 5-year-olds, but that was pretty much the extent of their knowledge of the whole Jesus-Christmas connection.

I guess I shouldn’t have been as surprised by their many sweet, honest, wrong answers, but the school is in a heavily Latino neighborhood where many of the students are Catholic children of devout immigrants. I expected a shorter learning curve.

In their five or six years on Earth, the kids I met have mastered the all-American consumerist meaning of Christmas. It’s the “true meaning,” if you believe in such things, of what we mark on Dec. 25 that seems largely to have escaped them.

Who’s to blame? It’s an uphill battle to sneak baby Jesus in the side door while visions of sugarplums and fat, bearded guys bearing Nintendos dance in their heads.

The thing is, there was so much expectation in that classroom Friday for so many things. These were not rich kids. Many of them, I’m told, would be lucky to find anything under their trees Christmas morning.

That expectation is what Christmas really is about.

Something, someone is coming. That, they know.

It’s the who and the how and the why that remain a mystery. They’re not alone. Most of us, even those among us who consider themselves devout, lose sight of the focus, of what that flashing star on top of the tree is supposed to symbolize — when the mall is crowded and some moron steals your parking space.

As I drove back to the office from the school Friday, I kept thinking about that scene in “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” when uber-brat Gladys Herdman (playing the annunciating angel) tells the Bethlehem-area shepherds, “Hey, unto you a child is born!”

The “Hey!” part is mostly what was on my mind. Hey, wahoos, it’s not about that, it’s about this. LOOK OVER HERE! Something’s coming.

For as long as I can remember, since I was the same age as David and Efrain and Javier, I suppose, “Lo, How a Rose E’re Blooming” has been my favorite Christmas carol. Admittedly, I also harbor an odd affection for Alvin and the Chipmunks, but still, that soft, simple English (or German) traditional carol is my cosmic “HEY!”

Its refrain, “When half spent was the light . . . when half spent was the night,” captures the precarious moment, the tipping point, if you will, when, the Bible and tradition tells us, Jesus Christ arrived as a defenseless baby born to a young, oppressed couple in the straw, next to the livestock.

Known as Santa’s cousin to a few.

A savior to many.

A gift to all.

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