In the hit streaming series The Chosen, a child named Abigail encounters an encampment where Jesus is living during His ministry. He seems to be temporarily absent (though He turns out to be fully aware of her), so Abigail brings out a cloth doll she carries and imagines feeding it with food Jesus has left out. “Yum, yum, yum, yum,” she says in a playful voice.

The scene is beautifully comical but also an extraordinarily perceptive presentation of Our Lord’s understanding of, and interaction with, children. Later, He will tell the crowd of friends Abigail brings back to meet Him that they have a wisdom lacked by even the smartest adults in their lives. Their wisdom arises from their purity of faith and love that only He is able to perceive, and which is at the heart of the seven words that initiate, year after year, the Christian story: “For unto us a child is born.”

Those words are not just some romantic evocation of childhood innocence. They remind us as faithful Catholics that the newness of eternal hope embodied in every child coming into the world signifies the gift of creative joy given by God to all who are born, and born again. It is a gift that feeds the beautifully comic, often extraordinarily perceptive, imaginations actively evident in growing lives.

We see representations of it every year with our Christmas (and Easter) drawing contests in which pupils envision and render their perceptions of Christ the King as a newborn child entering the world.

Each year, of course, three “winners” are chosen from the many artists who submit, although in reality each child who sits down to imagine in love and faith a depiction of the Saviour has “won,” just we all already have victory in Christ.

The youngest of our artists in 2023 is Sean Chu, of Divine Mercy Elementary School, in the Grade 1 to 3 category. Isabella Samy, a Grade 5 pupil also at Divine Mercy in Mississauga, tops our Grade 4 to 6 group. Emylio Garcia de la Vega, who is in Grade 8 at St. Aloysius School, wins among Grade 7 to 8 entrants.

Each receives $75 in Amazon gift certificates. Their drawings, and other entries, will be on display at catholicregister.org/christmascontest. Our thanks go out to all who entered, as well as parents and teachers who did the work at this busiest time year of getting the entries to us.