It was long after midnight — somewhere past 1 a.m. — this Christmas when I had finished cleaning up Christmas Eve dinner and made the living room ready for Christmas morning. I was just getting ready to go up to bed when I remembered one last, tiny thing: Baby Jesus. Baby Jesus needed to be in the manger on Christmas morning, in our big Nativity set and in the little plastic one we put right next to it for Teresa to play with. In our house, when we put up the Nativity set before Christmas, Baby Jesus stays away until we are ready to celebrate his birthday. It was that way when I was growing up, and it’s a tradition I maintain for my own kids. Before they pick up a stocking or open a present, I ask them to check and make sure Baby Jesus is there. He always has been so far. It’s one way to remind them (as if Mass wasn’t reminder enough) of what we’re really celebrating. It’s not the jolly old elf all dressed in red, although Santa certainly does visit our house. It’s not even the chance to hang out and eat holiday foods — from baked ham and stuffed potatoes to gingerbread cookies and cinnamon bread — with our near and dear ones. It’s the baby in the manger, looking tiny and vulnerable in one Nativity set, stout and unbreakable in the other. But all the Fisher Price Little People look like that. Christmas, the feast of the Incarnation, celebrates the core tenet of Christianity that God really did become one of us. And as a human baby, he felt cold until someone wrapped him up and cuddled him, he cried when he was hungry and he was vulnerable to a thousand kinds of hurt. Everything, we believe, but sin. In his new book, “Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives,” Pope Benedict XVI wrote that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke — the only two to mention the birth of Jesus — make no mention of animals in the stable, and, what’s more, it probably was a cave. But he goes on to say that the inclusion of animals — a tradition likely started by St. Francis of Assisi about 800 years ago — is fine. So is the inclusion of three wise men, with their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, even though St. Matthew never says how many there were, or where exactly they were from. Some people don’t include the magi in their nativity scenes until the Feast of the Epiphany, traditionally celebrated Jan. 6, and in some parts of the world that is the day children traditionally receive gifts. I don’t think I could be organized enough to keep the magi out of my nativity scenes until Epiphany, and then make sure they take their places at the appropriate time. But I can take the opportunity to once again reflect on the meaning of Christmas, and what would move the magi to come bearing their ohso- impractical baby gifts (except for the gold. That’s always practical) such a long way.