Here’s the latest from the crossroads of faith, media & culture: 11/09/22

My, how time flies. Not the 800 years since that first Christmas crèche in 1223. That’s a long time. I’m talking about the year since I spoke with author Laurel Guillen about her then new family-friendly novel A Bellwether Christmas telling the story of that centuries-ago event through the eyes of the farm animals on the scene. It was a great story then and now, a year later on the 800th anniversary of the actual occasion, it seems even more timely to reflect on.

JWK: Good talking with you again. We spoke last year which I guess was the 799th anniversary of the first Christmas crèche.

Laurel Guillen: Right! This is the 800th! We’re human beings. We like those nice round numbers. Every Christmas is really an anniversary of this but 800 sounds big – and it it is! That’s a real big chunk of history there.

JWK: So, why did the book come out last year? Why didn’t you wait until this year?

LG: Well, I wanted to get it out. You know, I wanted to publish it as soon as possible. I thought it was going to take me until this year to publish it but I was fortunate in finding someone who wanted to publish it right away. He said “No, I have an opening this year.” I said “Go for it!” Why wait? I (thought) this will give me run-up time to the 800 (mark) so I wouldn’t have to be scrambling at the last minute.

JWK: I know your story is told through the point of view of the animals but what do we know about the actual event of the creation of the Nativity scene. How did that come about?

LG: We know a few details. We know it happened from first person accounts – but the first person accounts are kind of skimpy. So, in my book I embellish it. For instance, it says that there was an ox and a donkey. Then it says the people saw – or thought they saw – a Baby Jesus. It doesn’t say there was a Mary and a Joseph or that there were shepherds…There was a mass. There were candles and torches and we know that the people went up to this cave and, based on where that cave was, there would have probably been a procession by candlelight up to this mountain cave. That cave still exists in Greccio, Italy. It’s that little town’s claim to fame. There was a Franciscan hermitage there.

JWK: So, in that town was the first time there was a physical depiction of the Nativity scene?

LG: See, back then people and churches didn’t do Nativity scenes. There were probably paintings of the Nativity. There may even have been some church cathedrals that might have had depictions of the Nativity but it wasn’t something that you just saw everywhere.

JWK: Like the kind of Nativity scenes you see outside of churches and outside of homes, it’s the first time something like that was done.

LG: Exactly. Francis got the idea. A few year (earlier) he had (been to) the Holy Land…If you were Christian you weren’t allowed to go the holy sites in the Holy Land because it was ruled by Muslims at the time…He kind of charmed the head caliph who was in charge (who) said “Ah, you can go.” So, he was able to actually go probably to Bethlehem, Jerusalem and places like that. He was inspired by that. He was nearing the end of his life, actually. He died in his mid-forties but he thought this would be a great thing to create.

It’s so fitting with the early Franciscans because Francis had this great flair for the dramatic. If you know the stories about him you would know that. There’s that famous story about him. He had this big feud with his father. His father really wanted him to become a cloth merchant the way he was (but) he was being drawn towards God. He was kinda living by himself and begging for stones to rebuild a church. The family was like, you know, he’s gone off the deep end. What’s going on with this guy? At one point the father kinda calls him up in an ecclesiastical court in the middle of the town. It was kinda like the bishop’s gonna reprimand you, that type of thing. Francis goes and strips all his clothes off in the middle of town and says “I no longer have a father!”…The bishop has somebody run over and put a robe around him and that was it. He was officially out of the family and out of the family business…Francis was always kind of a dramatic person.

He was known as a singer. He loved French ballads. That why his name was Frenchy. That’s what Francesco means, french man. We call him Francis. Purportedly he had a French mother or his mother came from France, possibly. He traveled with his dad to France and he spoke French. The French were the musicians of the day. That’s where all the ballads, all the singers, the songs and everything were coming from. Fashion and music was coming from France…The Franciscans were  known (for singing). They would just burst into song as they were walking around. They’d be traveling and they would just start singing. That’s just the way there were. They liked singing. They liked dancing lively songs. In fact, things like Christmas carols were also just coming into vogue around this time. You had very traditional songs at Christmas that were in Latin in the mass, then you had folk songs. A lot of them didn’t have to do with Christmas but some of them were starting to have to do with Christmas. So, that’s another thing that Franciscan were noted for: carols and songs.

JWK: So this was a time when a lot of Christian traditions started coming in, including the Nativity scene and Christmas carols.

LG: Yes. Christmas carols were also coming in at the same time. There were already midnight masses and stuff but having an outdoor candlelit mass in front of a Nativity scene, that had never been done. That’s what he did that night on Christmas Eve. That really changed the whole celebration because it became a huge success. They started imitating it like everywhere. That just became a thing to do. It really brought back a sense of the holy and the profound. It brought people back to the whole story of Christmas in a very populist, popular way – not just through the mass. He did this for townspeople which would have meant everybody from the peasants on up to Lord Giovanni who was the lord of that town who had helped arrange it. So, people could see the humility of Christ’s birth and that had a real impact on people. This was when the popular dialects and stuff like that were starting to pop up in song, even in worship-type songs. Francis also wrote some the lasting poems. You know, The Canticle of the Creatures, he wrote it in vernacular – in Italian, as opposed to Latin. That was also a big thing. That was starting to become popular. So, Christmas was turning a little bit more accessible.

JWK: So, Francis was kind of a showman.

LG: Oh, he as an incredible showman! I have a fictional depiction, obviously fictional because, you know, there are talking animals. I added a few things. For instance, I researched (and discovered) some of our earliest carols were just starting right around then. I found one – and you may have heard of this – called The Friendly Beasts. It talks about the cow who helps Baby Jesus…I think it was done by Burl Ives and a couple of others…It was like, so perfect. I was doing the research on it. The first indication of this carol was sometime in the early 13th century in France. I’m like Bingo! Everything in France just spread to Italy right away. I’m like this could have been a carol that they were just starting to sing around then. So, I put that in for the end. As they’re leaving the ceremony, I have them singing this carol.

JWK: We talked about this last year but can you recount briefly how you came up with this story and what you hope people take from it?

LG: Basically, this story kinda downloaded into my brain one Christmas season. It was shortly after Christmas, I believe. I had for a long time wanted to write something in this time period because I had been to Italy and I traveled all around the Umbria region which is where Francis was from. I saw a lot of the sites associated with Francis and the early Franciscans. I just fell in love with that whole time period and with the early Franciscans.

I came back and said I really want to write something. I tried for years to write an adult novel set there, It just didn’t come about. Then one day this idea just flashed into my brain. I sat there and I went “Wow! But this sounds almost like a children’s novel.” I would have to write it to be accessible to children. So, I had to write this at the fifth or sixth-grade level – which some of my friends teasingly say makes it much easier to read…It so happened that I’ve owned sheep – I still do. We still have one sheep left – because my son had sheep when he was in 4-H. Then he grew up and we decided not to send them to the butcher or whatever which is what (people) do very typically at the end of 4-H – which is bye-bye. They become meat – but he kept his. So, I’ve dealt with sheep.

Also, when we were living in Tennessee, the property next door was about 2000 acres with wild donkeys on it. Somebody bought it and wanted to get the donkeys off. So, he said “Mom, we’ve gotta adopt a donkey!” So, we adopted a female donkey who was having a baby. Then we ended up with two donkeys…So, I was like I understand donkeys. I understand sheep. I LOVE sheep. I was like that’s perfect because I could use some of their actual personalities and behaviors that I had seen them do and incorporate them into the story – and that’s what I did.

So, in fact, that helped the plot because Bart, who is the main protagonist, is this impetuous lamb who’s kind of restless and doesn’t know where he fits in but he’s also very clever and an incredible escape artist. That was exactly the personality of (our sheep) who also was named Bart. His name was actually Sir Barton. Also the female donkey in the book is named Violetta. We have a donkey named Violet – and she had some of the same characteristics, kind of a gentleness but also almost a timidity. She would never bray…I thought maybe something was wrong with her throat or something. She just wouldn’t bray for the longest time. It turned out she had her baby with her and I think until she felt comfortable she wouldn’t bray. One day I heard this really loud noise. It was probably four or five months after we had got her – and there she was braying as loud as a regular donkey. So, it just took a little while to get comfortable I think.

JWK: A wallflower. So, what did you hope to accomplish with this book?

LG: I wanted to write a story that would really be a Christmas story. In the end, Bart has to decide whether he’s going to make a sacrifice and risk a lot of danger to help a friend. There’s a lot of lessons in their in terms of what love, honor and belonging really mean. So, it really has a Christmas message. So, that was the first thing. It definitely had to have a Christmas message. I was looking for a book that was kind of like the wonderful books I had read as a kid – and I read every animal book out there. It’s kind of reminiscent of those really good classic books that you read as a kid and then you go back and read as an adult. I wanted a book that older children could read, younger children could have read to them and adults would enjoy. I think I’ve succeeded in that because I have a lot of friends who are adults and said they love it.

JWK: I know the book has won some awards since it came out.

LG: Yes. It’s won three awards, including a first-place Christian Indy Award for Children’s Books which I’m very proud of. So, it’s won three awards. I’ve gotten great reaction. I even had a veterinarian who did a review and said the animal behavior is so spot on. He said it’s just wonderful. Adults have talked about crying when they read the book. So, I’m like – perfect! That’s just what I was aiming for. It’s supposed to be very heartwarming and it’s supposed to be very touching.

JWK: Considering the story’s connection to the Franciscans and their connection to the music of the time, have you perhaps considered producing A Bellwether Christmas as an animated musical or something like that?

LG: We have hopes and plans to turn it into a movie, probably a live-action, something like Babe was – you know what I mean – or some of the other ones that have had real animals.

JWK: Oh, wow. I was thinking animation but you’re thinking live-action.

LG: Yeah, I’m thinking live-action. It could end up being animation. It just depends.

JWK: Is this in the works?

LG: It’s very preliminary stages. I can’t say it’s a go yet but there are people who are very serious about it who are working towards that end.

JWK: You’re also the production manager at Accelarise Media. Can you tell me about that?

LG: Yeah. Accelarise Media is a company that my husband and some partners have come up with and put together. I guess the best way to describe it is a content company. It’s meant to produce content but also come alongside others and help them produce content. It’s really aiming to produce content that isn’t the standard Hollywood fare but is much more what they call eudaimonic. In other words eudaimonia is the thriving life. It is something that’s helpful. It’s positive. It’s uplifting. It’s all those things. So, that’s what they’re working on and it’s coming together very nicely as a company.

JWK: Anything happening that you can talk about now?

LG: No, I can’t. They did unveil the website. The next announcements are coming.

JWK: Okay, we’ll look forward to that. Of course, your husband is Dr. Michael Guillen whose successful podcast is called Science + God.

LG: He’s just got a book out, actually, called Let Creation Speak!: 100 Invitations to Awe and Wonder which is really fun because he’s got all kinds of interesting little essays about things in the natural world…It’s a beautiful book. It’s everything from the “immortal” jellyfish to interesting weather phenomena or things about deep space that you never knew. So, it’s got a lot of really interesting stories about nature and then reflections on what that tells us about God and our relationship to God. So, it’s nice. It’s not like a heavy-duty Bible study or anything like that. It’s just kind of a look at creation, a look at how wonderful it is and how interesting it is – and what is it telling us?

JWK: I didn’t know this but you also have a gardening blog on Facebook.

LG: Yeah, God and Gardening. I’ve had that for a couple years. It’s whenever I’m out there I’m thinking about things. When something occurs to me I’ll write about it. It’s very short. It’s almost always just about 300 words. It’s just a little reflection that ties something about gardening with something about The Bible. There are so many agrarian kind of references in The Bible, you know about being part of the vine and the branches. You know, there’s so much because people back then could understand these analogies. Even today people can understand them. So, God uses a lot of that. When you talk about “What’s the first profession?” I would say gardening. If you count gardening as taking care of plants – and animals – that’s what Adam and Eve were doing. That’s what we were meant to do originally.

JWK: That’s even before the other oldest profession, I guess.

LG: Yeah, right! (Gardening is) the true oldest profession! So, I don’t do sermons. I just try to do things about gardening that have clicked in my mind…When things like that happen to me I just write a blog and send it up there.

JWK: How often do you post it?

LG: I’ve done it as often as once a week and as infrequently as once every couple months. It just depends on how busy I am and how many things come to mind – but I’ve got several dozen.

JWK: Great. Anything you’d like to add as we wrap up?

LG: You should know the Catholic Church did finally come out with some celebrations of this 800th anniversary. If you google it they did a thing about the history of the Nativity scene. They’re also doing a special thing at St. Peter’s Square to commemorate it.

Note: Laura Guillen will be interviewed about A Bellwether Christmas and the 800th anniversary of the Greccio Christmas crèche on the Franciscan Christmas Eve Special airing live on Seton Hall University Pirate Radio this Sunday (Christmas Eve) from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM (ET).

John W. Kennedy is a writer, producer and media development consultant specializing in television and movie projects that uphold positive timeless values, including trust in God.