2:22 a.m. We begin the story of the Nativity with the two shepherds who came to visit that first evening. They are husband and wife, and as I envision them, they are gossipy and small-minded. They've come to see what all the fuss is about, because it is the Thing To Do.

Too cheap and too uppity to buy a gift, they have dragged along one of their little sheep to leave behind. That would be the two stuck-together cotton balls that you can see in the bottom right of the picture. His little rotini fragment of a tail is stuck under in terror.

The shepherd used to have a Q-tip for a staff, but over the years it got just too disgusting, so I threw it out maybe a year or so ago. Otherwise, these guys are exactly as they sprang from my kitchen table in 1966.

You can sort of see the snide, catty look in their eyes, can't you? Since these were the first two figures I made on a bad evening a couple of days before my first married Christmas, the brunt of my misogamy was expended on them. Their eyes were tiny flocked flowers that I had left over from my wedding veil -- I'd hand sewn them on by the thousands here and there in the huge mass of floaty special veiling that was thinner than tulle, softer than an illusion.

Their eyes were stuck into the little Styrofoam balls with ordinary straight pins right through the center. The Styrofoam balls were speared with a pipe cleaner and then stuck into the neck of the construction paper cones that make up the bodies. Easy -- once you learn how to stab instead of sew.

The shepherd has tiny strips of colored tape all over his outfit and his long scarf. This tape was something we had a ton of around the old walkup apartment because the Christmas party that was entertaining my husband while I was slicing up the office supplies was being given by the manufacturer of the tape, the Permacel Corporation of New Brunswick, New Jersey, a division of Johnson and Johnson.

What a huge mess of dashed hopes was I working with there on that kitchen table! I thought J&J was going to include me, the wife, in social events, just as they'd promised before we were married, and before my husband took the job. Nope. Didn't happen.

I thought I could get another job at another newspaper, no problem. I thought we'd wait at least two years before having babies, or at least until he came back from Viet Nam. I thought I would do better at marriage than my poor old mother, who was divorced.

The shepherd's wife's veil was a piece of ribbon from a wedding gift. Ladies wore veils back then, I believed. She looked down on the Blessed Mother because the rumor was that she'd had to get married (you know), and that she was too poor and disorganized to plan ahead and get them a room before going into labor. Tsk. Tsk.

The gift would have been something silver or Lenox from my husband's side of the family; something everyday and unremarkable from my side. They actually used words like "marrying up" back in those days. Certain ethnic groups thought themselves better than others; and woman didn't work if they had children.

All the thank-you notes had been mailed in two separate batches of small engraved envelopes -- half were addressed to people with names ending in vowels. The Christmas cards were mailed, evenly divided between Pennsylvania and New Jersey addresses. My festive red and green felt flowers were strung up and down the banister in the apartment hall. Red and green ball fringe was taped across the used furniture. It was going to be a perfect Christmas.

All I needed was a miracle.