Monday, December 28, 2009

Questions, Demands, and Thinly Veiled Threats


So you want to know about the Holden version of the pilgrimage to Bethlehem...whether or not everyone and everything arrived in time for the heralded (ahem!!) event.

Some evidence of the extent to which things have gone awry may be determined from the fact that the camel has taken refuge on the second-floor porch of Lodge 2. Just when this happened and just how the beast of burden negotiated its way up the staircase remains a mystery, but the camel seems content to remain on the porch and to survey the incomprehensible scene below.


The camel loves the press it is currently being given but I want to tell all of you straight-off that some of you are really pushy about getting immediate answers to your questions. I mean you are telling me about what is going to happen and what your state of mind will be (it starts with a p and the word I am thinking of is not perturbed!) if I don't finish the story about the trek to the manger. So I will finish the story for you... even if the story fails to live up to O Holy Night standards, which it does.

A second thing I want to tell you straight off is that (no surprise here) the flamingos did not make it. Flaming-y failed to get his head out of the snowbank, and since Flaming-y is ONLY a head, then there was no rest-of-him to get out of the snowbank and go to Bethlehem.

Miss Scarlett made it to the manger but took one look at that pitiful sight and rushed Pinky right back up to Agape's porch lest he see something he ought not see and be ruined for life. Miss Scarlett was reported to be all a-fluster, vowing all the while never to leave again...bonnet and leg warmers notwithstanding.


As seen from afar (ahem, ahem!!)...say from as far away as a satellite in outer space...things seem normal... well, for the most part. There is a manger scene. The Mary and the Joseph (such as they are) who began the journey made it to the stable. There are angels. There is a shepherd. The sheep showed up. There is a baby Jesus.


But the Baby Jesus is covered with snow!! (Maybe not enough snow if you take a closer look. ) The position of the arms is not one of a baby reaching out to its mother and the world beyond. These arms are a foreshadowing of the crucifixion that is to come. And the Crocs??!! Admittedly more comfortable than the sandals of 2,000 years ago but also a foreshadowing of the dreadful things yet to come into being. And "the swaddling clothes"? (Or as the line in the recent Holden play, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, went, " the wadded-up clothes.") A (putting it politely) highly whimsical fleece scarf. (The sheep were particularly interested in this fleece thing. A reprieve. Of sorts. Perhaps.)


And the cow? The same cow that began the journey from atop Chalet Hill? So far away. So far to go. Upon determining the whereabouts of Lucille, the erstwhile heifer, I discovered a pile of rubble on the path by the kiosk. Some of the objects in the pile were vaguely familiar to various parts of the original Lucille. With her hat still affixed to her milk jug head, it seems that at some point she had completely fallen apart atop her skis.

And the yellow duckling? The first to arrive? Vanished without a trace. There is obvious villainy round and about.

At the moment we await an epiphany and The Epiphany. On January 6, the Wise Men arrive from the East. (For real. They are, we hear, en route.)

It will take the combined talents and all their wisdom to sort this out. And in my humble opinion, if they arrive with a ham!! in lieu of gold and frankincense and myrrh (also from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever) they won't need to sort it out! We can all sit down and eat! Ham!

If and when...but only if and when...there is any more to report regarding these extravagant events, I will report. The world needs to know all the possibilities of madness that can befall it.


1 comment:

lwise said...

Priceless! I love it.