The party in our manger turns into some kind of Quantum Leap episode

Oh, Christmas. The time when old meets new. Tradition meets gold garland. Holy meets commercial. I just didn't expect that all to happen so quickly, so blatantly in our little manger, tucked into a cold and drafty windowsill next to the tree.  But as soon as Lil E eyed the Jesus action figure in the kitchen while I was busy spreading soy butter and jelly on toaster waffles (shhh, no need to tell me...I know this is the part of mothering I get right), that a new Christ was about to ascend upon the lowly barn.

Prepare thyself, Baby Jesu, you are about to meet the future you.

That's what I thought as I sliced apples and reheated coffee. Lil E padded off in his elf socks and Christmas jammies that ride up a little too high on his legs and arms this year and I got caught up in caffeinating and finding the last bit of creamer in the refrigerator. Until I heard a high, sing-songy voice echo in the room.

I didn't recognize it at first. I thought it could be the kids downstairs or the TV. But as I craned my head to listen, I realized the voice was Lil E's version of someone girly or silly, which are to him at four, quite the same characteristic.

"I am a princess," the faint tune went. "Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii am a priiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnncesssssssssssss."

That repeated several times before I put the pieces and the people there at the manger together.

"I am a princess!" The lilty voice amplified.

"Ummm, who is the princess in the manger with Baby Jesus?" I called to my boy.

He annunciated in a loud whisper that shot across the living room to the kitchen where the soy butter was still on the knife I was holding.

"It's God," he nodded like he'd just revealed the secret of how the rock at the tomb was moved.

"Jesus...?" I had to get this one right. I needed clarification. "Jesus...is a princess?"

"YES!" he jumped up and smiled triumphantly, the infant savior and the adult action figure, each in a hand.

"I KNEW IT!" I yelled back with my own sense of triumph. "I knew it all along! Jesus IS a princess!"

A little while later, Lil E nibbled on his waffle sandwich and I finished up my second cup of coffee, and it occured to me how that equation was formulated in his preschool mind.

"By chance is Jesus a princess," I interrupted Diego and his magic fanny pack were saving drowning, orphaned cheetahs or whatever goes on during that show, "because he wears those long dresses?"

He looked back at me, eyebrows knit with some moderate concern and validation of my complete dumb-assedness on all things natal, gendered and mangerly.

"Yeah." He said it flatly. "Yeah, he's a princess in a dresses."

As he turned back to his breakfast and TV, I saw him glance over at the two Jesuses almost touching but not, just as Scott Bakula always did in the final scene of each episode. I swear he smiled. Lil E, I mean. The Jesuses are far more sovereign than that, even when meeting by chance in a mossy, dusty barn on a cold winter's night, with a pajamed, hungry angel keeping watch over them both by day and by night.