A Different Hallelujah (a two-part Story)
We called them Mary and Joe. It was the kind of Nativity scene you erect in your yard. I bought it from Sears: Mary, Joseph, a cow, two sheep, a donkey, a shepherd and a wise man. The deluxe one had three wise men, but we couldn’t go deluxe. And of course there was the baby Jesus in a wooden manger. All the figures were translucent plastic with lightbulbs inside. You’ve seen the type — maybe even owned a set. They were large but not life-size. Impersonating Joseph, our son (then four) when down on one knee by baby Jesus could easily be mistaken for the real thing — except of course for the light bulb inside.
The second year — after our big move from Florida — I embellished the whole scene with a tear-down-fold-up wooden frame that was the stable. Being now in Kentucky, I scrounged some hay from a friendly horse farm. Each year after that I bought a whole bale of hay from a feed store. So, every year — and there were a lot of years — the scene had a fresh hay-thatched roof plus a foot of hay on the heavy wooden floor I made for the whole thing to sit on. We lived high on a hill on an acre of land. It was a long front yard that sloped sharply down from the house to the street. The manger scene sat squarely in the center of the yard among a lot of tall trees. By using a long section ladder up against the tallest tree I attached a 150-Watt spotlight — the Christmas star. I stretched 100 feet of electrical cord from that star to a security light on the corner of our house. I could now switch the star on each night from inside the house — which of course I didn’t do until close to Christmas Eve. I wanted to keep It all strictly authentic.
And it was all very effective — at least in my opinion. I wanted to put big speakers in the trees to play Christmas music for the neighbors to enjoy. Mimi was against it. On hindsight, she was very wise. I know it all sounds cheesy and tacky, but the scene didn’t look too bad. People would even stop on occasion and take photos of their children sitting in the hay with the animals. Sometimes our cocker spaniel would sit-in with Mary and Joe. She blended right in. Mimi did like the manger scene. She just didn’t like all the time it took me to set it up each year. Extra Christmas activities at church meant the only time I had was very late at night, extending sometimes into the wee hours of the morning — especially after the cow wandered off.
It’s true! One morning when we awoke the cow was gone. I put up signs all around the neighborhood — “Lost cow. Please return. No questions asked.” The response was they took the donkey too. This was all very strange because our neighborhood was known to be an unusually safe neighborhood. So, the next year I had to buy a new cow and a new donkey. They weren’t as good as the old ones. The donkey was bigger than the cow, but true art is forgiving. I tied them down this time with stakes in the ground and ropes attached. It takes a long time to do all that so I didn’t tie down the sheep. Bad mistake! It took just one night and the sheep was gone. That was the day I declared war. (You don’t mess with my sheep.)
I was up almost all the next night burglar-proofing the whole thing. And it worked. There was evidence that someone had made a failed attempt to steal baby Jesus one night, but there were no more attempts — that is, until the following year.
What turned out to be that final and fateful year I determined I would be ready for whatever may come. I worked from dinner to almost sun-up. But you have to do what you have to do. I bored a quarter inch hole all the way through each figure. It made the worn and frazzled figures look even more pitiful. Through the years Mary had lost her bottom and Joseph was one third duct tape. The acrylic paint I used to repaint them several times was flaking off. In spite of all this our neighbors across the street still said that our manger scene sitting silently way up on our hill, lighting up that little spot on a cold dark night made a statement to their family of the real meaning of Christmas. Their children actually said that it was their favorite part of Christmas — that Christmas didn’t start for them until they would wake up while it was still dark, look out of their bedroom window, and see Mary, Joe, and the baby Jesus glowing in the dark.
A Different Hallelujah — Part two
Well, back to business. Through that quarter inch hole I ran a heavy plastic coated steel cable through each of the eight figures including the manger and all the stable parts. I bought an anchor and screwed it nearly three feet into the ground. It was a heavy steel corkscrew anchor — the kind they use at airports to tie down light planes in stormy conditions. The top of the anchor was buried out of sight, and I attached the cable to the anchor with lock screws. I covered it all with hay. It all looked very innocent but I was ready.
I had seriously considered digging a huge pit and camouflaging it with hay so that the thieves would fall into the pit and be trapped. But the Kentucky ground is too hard for digging in the winter time — at least for the size hole I had envisioned.
The first night was uneventful. It all happened about the third night, a week before Christmas. The star had not been turned on. It was close to 9 o’clock. Mimi was sitting in the living room. I was walking into the living room from our downstairs bedroom. We suddenly heard one of the weirdest, loudest noises we had ever heard or probably ever will hear. It sounded like a crash but it was definitely not a car crash. It came from the front yard. Ironically, as the familiar story goes:
When out on the lawn there rose such a clatter
I sprang from the bedroom to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash.
I pulled back the curtain and looked through the sash.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear
but a getaway car with a driver so quick
he was soon out of sight — and it wasn’t Saint Nick.
As the car sped away I saw no trace of the manger scene. It was all gone. Or was it! No! It was all there — the miniature stable and eight tiny figures strewn 100 feet from the top of our yard almost to the bottom.
Everything was nearly totally flattened, but it was still there — all attached to my trusty steel cable. I exclaimed to Mimi, “It’s the manger scene! They’ve destroyed my manger scene!” Mimi literally leaped from her chair and yelled, “Hallelujah!”
It was another long night — that night. I was determined to put it all back together as if nothing had happened. I was thinking, That’ll show those guys when they drive back by here tomorrow. And I did put it all back together. It took a whole industrial-size roll of duct tape and I don’t know how many hours, but by early morning it looked the same as always — very, very fragile but looked the same. Before the next night I added a new feature. I bought a large roll of very fine black plastic landscape netting — 10 feet wide. I stretched it 10 feet high and nailed it on all the trees surrounding the manger scene and anchored it into the ground. So now the scene was enclosed 360 degrees in an invisible 10-foot plastic fence.
I was now hoping they WOULD come back again. I wanted them to come and run into the net and go “boing, boing!”. And then get hung in the net. That would teach ‘em! Then I began planning how I could affix my double-barrelled shotgun to a tree — aimed to the sky, or course, but with a string running from baby Jesus to the first trigger and another string from the manger to the second trigger. Or maybe a string from the netting to both triggers. And I could camp out behind a tree and watch them go “boing, boing, boom, boom!”
It was about then that God’s Holy Spirit began to speak softly to my spirit which was not so holy at that moment. Something was wrong with this picture. My spirit had become like that of the Mary and Joe thieves — bent on evil and destruction. I was becoming a Grinch. So, I reformed in my spirit and enjoyed the rest of that season in the true spirit of Christmas. And maybe the thieves did too, because Mary and Joe, the baby Jesus, and the rest of the whole nativity gang went through the rest of the holiday season untouched. We moved to Hawaii that next June. Every now and then in Hawaii at Christmas time I would look longingly out on our front lawn — which had become very small. And Mimi, reading my mind would say, “Don’t you dare get any ideas!”
Is there a moral to this story? You bet! Christmas is not about hype. It’s about Heart! Hallelujah!