Relics of the nativity

My mother always knew her name to be Belen, that is, until she needed a Philippine Statistics Authority-certified birth certificate to renew her passport. No birth record could be found, prompting us to presume she was born at home rather than in a hospital. Her parents must have forgotten to register the infant. The best bet was a baptismal certificate found in Ususan, Taguig, her hometown, but this listed her as “Valeriano”! Known as Belen for six decades, she blamed her wicked stepmother for the mistake. She believed that when the priest asked for the name of the child to be baptized, her stepmother thought she was asked and gave her name “Valeriana.” We don’t know how she convinced the Department of Foreign Affairs to overlook this clerical discrepancy because her passport was renewed under the name “Belen.”

Belen is not just my mother’s name; it is the Spanish form of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ. Belen is also the word for the nativity scenes we have grown up with on greeting cards, or three-dimensional representations in cardboard, wood, or plastic in Catholic churches and malls during the Christmas season. I look back on the belen today, inspired by Mahar Mangahas’ recent column on the census at the time of Jesus’ birth (see “The first Christmas census,” 12/20/25). A belen has three main characters: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Their Spanish forms “Jesus, Maria y Jose,” gave us the old-fashioned ejaculation “Susmariosep.” In English, it gave us “Jejomar”—from JE(sus) JO(seph) MAR(y)—the name of a longtime Makati mayor and former vice president.

Filipinos know the nativity scene well. At the center of any belen are Joseph and Mary, beside a crib or manger with an infant aglow in otherworldly light. Around them are shepherds, donkeys, sheep, and camels. On one side are three male figures in Oriental attire offering treasure chests with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Nativity scenes are set in a dark stable or a cave lighted from above by a star and an angel, carrying an open scroll with the Latin inscription “Gloria in excelsis deo (Glory to God in the highest).” Representation of the nativity is loosely based on two of the four Gospel texts, Matthew and Luke, which narrate the birth of Jesus. Both texts agree on three things: Bethlehem as the birthplace; Joseph and Mary as names of the parents; and conception of the Virgin as divinely inspired. These texts disagree on the details. Matthew says Jesus was born in a house, while Luke places the birth in a manger, because there were no vacancies in any of the inns due to the influx of people coming in for the census described in Mangahas’ column. How come some nativity scenes set the birth in a cave or grotto?

All these reminded me about jeweled reliquaries in gold and silver from the Middle Ages that contained objects relating to the nativity. Voltaire, in his 1763 Treatise on Tolerance, referred to and made fun of relics of Jesus’ navel and foreskin. I remember seeing in a museum an elaborate gold reliquary that once held a piece of Jesus’ foreskin. Benedictine historian Guibert of Nogent (1055-1124) scoffed at the existence of one of Jesus’ milk teeth. He commented cheekily, “How did anyone think to preserve it?” Despite his religious calling, Guibert maintained the historian’s skepticism. When he learned of two heads of John the Baptist venerated in different churches, he asked, “Was he bicephalous?”

There are also relics of St. Joseph strewn over Europe. Not pieces of his body or first-class relics but second-class ones, being personal objects: a staff, a girdle, a cloak. In one monastery, I was shown an ancient piece of cloth the custodian described as being from “St. Joseph’s underpants.” Joseph’s hammer and some wood plows allegedly made in his carpentry shop were also available for veneration. Some of these plows were doubly valuable because they were believed to have been made by Joseph’s apprentice, the young Jesus.

Relics of the Virgin Mary abound: a belt in the Cathedral of Prato in Italy; her tunic and veil in Chartres, France; and the shroud she was buried in are preserved in the Cathedral of Aachen. Strands of her hair were to be found in various churches in Europe, with one that was sent to the Philippines. In the ancient church of Saints Peter and Paul in Poblacion, Makati, is an image of the Virgin of the Rose that, in the 18th century, was said to contain a reliquary with a strand of the Virgin’s hair. In one English monastery, I was shown a crystal reliquary with a smudge that was supposed to be the breast milk of the Virgin Mary. In a church in Italy were chips of white rock that were said to have been originally dark until drops of the Virgin’s milk spilled on them miraculously, changing their color.

As a historian, I am fascinated by the stories behind all of these relics of the nativity. Professionally, I view all of them with the proverbial grain of salt, but marvel at the way Christian lore and legend have gone beyond the Gospel texts to shape the way we imagine and remember the scene of the first Christmas.

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