The Theft Of Baby Jesus

The Theft Of Baby Jesus

There’s always some-one who goes too far,

Whose judgement seems somewhat defective,

Getting Christmas all out of proportion,

And losing their sense of perspective.

The bloke in our village was one of these:

Went over the top for Noel-time tradition,

Thought the number of lights on his house,

Was some sort of yearly competition.

He had everything on display,

Such a mess, it was really a sin:

A complete mish-mash of every sort,

Every blessed thing that you might imagine.

There was Santa with all twelve of his reindeer,

Delivering presents piled up on his sleigh.

It took so many bulbs to light up this scene,

You’d have thought night had turned into day.

There were snow-men and snow-women,

Cartoon characters, the holly and ivy,

Illustrations of every blessed carol,

And tunes in a tape-loop to keep it all lively.

This guy was more than a fanatic -

Of under-statement there was no danger:

And his central tableau showed a great star,

Hovering over the scene in the manger.

There were Mary & Joseph in the stable,

With the Holy Infant, shepherds and then,

A hovering Angel of The Lord,

And a gathering of the three wise men.

And there were great piles of presents,

As if no detail could be allowed to pass,

Every type of farm-yard animal,

Not merely the ox and the ass.

A twenty-foot Christmas tree capped off the scene,

Which became a local attraction,

And the passing traffic became so bad,

That we decided we had to take action.

A group of us hatched our plot in the pub,

Which is not the best place to think straight,

But it seemed a good idea at the time,

When we’d had a few, and the hour got late.

  

The plan was to hit him where it hurt,

Something to make that daft bugger feel.

We were going to remove Baby Jesus,

Yes! – the Son of Man we plotted to steal.

We decided we’d hold Him to ransom,

And that, as the fruit of our labours,

He’d then scale down the size of his display,

And we’d be the toast of his neighbours.

We thought it’d be the simplest of raids,

To sneak in among that barrage of light,

To just steal the youthful Son of Man,

And disappear back into the night.

But we counted without so many wires,

That would cause us so many glitches -

The complex inter-connectedness,

The circuits and timers and switches.

Electricity don’t mix with stupidity –

We were pissed (to use the vernacular),

And as we made our grab for the infant,

The meltdown was truly spectacular.

Our theft was far from deft,
Taking the hostage created a ruction.

The air became blue, as the fuses all blew,

And that was the end of abduction.

The lights went out all over the house,

As the circuits became overloaded,

And there was a short-term glow in the sky,

As the whole of the creation exploded.

Then in the street and the village,

There was an end to illumination.

It carried on all down the valley,

And finally blew up the sub-station.

It was a case of a simple crime gone wrong,

And in later years, folks were heard to say,

It made a great change from the usual -

The most spectacular one-off display!

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2017