The baby lay on her tummy, with her head turned to the left. The fuzzy, pink bonnet on her head matched the pink, fuzzy, full-skirted dress she wore. Her sweet, small lips reminded me of a pretty rosebud. Peacefully asleep, her closed eyes displayed dark eyelashes resting upon her cheeks. I happily pulled her out of the wrapping paper to wrap my arms around her.

Mom allowed me to open my Christmas presents after we arrived home from attending midnight Mass. Daddy had gone to bed so he could sleep a few hours before having to get up to milk our cows.

A zipper all along the hem of the baby doll’s fuzzy, pink skirt opened to allow me to store my pajamas when I wasn’t wearing them. Mom said, “She’ll look so pretty in your bedroom on the bed.” The baby wasn’t really a doll. She was something pretty that a grownup girl could use and enjoy.

I fully understood that this was my last baby doll of my childhood. I was growing up, allowed to stay up for midnight Mass and even sing on the choir. Pressing the sleeping baby’s face against mine, I drew a deep breath. The wonderful smell of plastic that her head and hands were made of made me mentally revisit every new baby doll I’d ever received in past Christmases.

When I went to bed, I took my pajama bag doll with me. Curling up under the covers in my chilly bedroom, I cuddled and sniffed the perfume of the sweet baby. I was fine with no longer receiving dollies for Christmas, but there was something very nostalgic about the smell of this one. I laid there, awake and lingering at the outer edges of my childhood and sleep until the gray light of Christmas day’s winter dawn peeked into the windows.

In the morning when I finally awoke and went downstairs, I was greeted by the mouthwatering smell of roast chicken. We had company coming over for our holiday dinner. Mom had already made fresh bread. I took a fragrant slice of bread and buttered it.

As our visitors arrived, I took their coats to lay them on the bed in Mom and Daddy’s bedroom. I could identify the owner of each coat by the scents they carried. One smelled of tobacco, another of wood smoke. A musky perfume clung to a fur collar of one and another had an unfamiliar scent that made me think of a gas stove.

Many years later, I lost the ability to smell as many things as I did as a child. I’m guessing this is a common complaint as a person gets older, but surprisingly there are still a few things that I can still smell as with a child’s nose…fresh basil and an orange when it is being peeled!

When I remembered all the wonderful things I enjoyed smelling during my childhood, my pajama bag baby doll came to mind. Then, I began to wonder about baby Jesus who was born in a Bethlehem stable. What strange new smells did His brand-new little nose smell? Since he was in a cave used for animals and even shared the space that night with a donkey, I’m sure he smelled the animal and felt the warmth it provided.

Some people might be horrified and consider the cave dirty, but I grew up playing in a cow barn and around animals and never thought their natural smell was disgusting. There are a lot worse places to be born than in a clean barn!

When the shepherds came to visit Jesus, did he smell the fresh air and wind on their robes like I smelled on Mom’s freshly washed and clothesline dried laundry?

Wise men traveled a long way from the east to visit Jesus in Bethlehem. I imagine Jesus smelled the spices they cooked with, and of the incense they burned.

With senses sharpened by not only by being a brand-new human, but by his divinity, Jesus loved all that was around him: Mary and Joseph’s caresses, the large, shaggy cattle, bleating lambs, and the smell of dried grass. These things were all good, very good, just as they was on the day of the world’s creation.