a (late) christmas story

I have a habit of referring to animals as being “heathens” and I realized this most likely stems from an incident that occurred several years ago: The Great Holiday Massacre of Nineteen-Nineteysomethingruther.

One of our family pets was a mutant Welsh Corgi/yellow Labrador amalgam named Corky. Poor Cork had issues, to put it lightly, but most days he was a fine dog.

My family has never been particularly religious, but we did have a Nativity scene handed down from my paternal grandmother. It wasn’t a priceless antique, but it was a nice little German papier mâchè crèche. Each year we dutifully set it up beneath the sheltering limbs of the Christmas tree, and each year it remained unmolested by man or beast (save the rare overzealous gift-grabber).

Coincidentally, the same year Corky came into our lives, members of the Nativity began disappearing.
First it was one of the Three Wise Men.
Then one of the manger animals wandered astray.
By the time we found the partially-digested remains in the backyard, poor Joseph had already gone AWOL.

We found a more suitable home for the manger on the fireplace mantel and ended up purchasing a second Nativity set. In subsequent years we had a rotating cast of crèche understudies including two baby Jesuses, which we swapped depending on how the spirit moved us.

The Massacre occurred around the time that Newt Gingrich was banging his drum and squawking about the whole family values/unwed welfare mothers thing. Given we were living in suburban D.C., I’ll honor Corky’s furry, floppy-eared memory by assuming the random disappearances were merely his frustrated commentary on the political climate at that time.


Currently spinning:
Modest Mouse mix