I’d see it every morning during the Christmas season on my walk to work, a life-sized Nativity scene outside a church on the edge of Little Italy. Problem was, baby Jesus kept disappearing from the manger.
This was back in the ‘80s, a bad time for street crime in New York. Funny thing was that nobody ever swiped the rest of the statues - Mary, Joseph or the three wise men (in that neighborhood, three wise guys would have been more like it.)
But Jesus always vanished before his actual birthday.
Who was stealing him? What price could a plaster statue of the infant Jesus get on the black market?
Or was it just neighborhood rascals, having a little fun?
Year after year, it kept happening. What could be done?
Well, somebody figured that powerful spotlights would thwart the thieves. Up went the lights, worthy of a Hollywood premiere. It worked for a night or two, but one morning close to Christmas I saw a grim-faced priest standing at the edge of the scene, shaking his head at the empty patch of straw in the manger.
The problem was that the figures were out in the open, unlike the Christmas scene outside another church I passed each day on Bleecker Street.
That one had their Nativity figures inside a big wooden box, open in front and protected by a layer of chicken wire. It made them look like illegal aliens in a holding pen, awaiting asylum.
No, there had to be a better way for the Little Italy Nativity…and one magical holiday season, it happened. Morning after morning on my way to work, baby Jesus remained intact. Ditto on the walk home.
I had no work on Christmas day, but I had to stop by the church that morning to see if he was still there. I worked my way through the crowd for the ten o’clock mass, and there Jesus lay, safe in the manger!
It was a miracle!
But wait - what was that metal knob protruding from his navel? I got closer for a better look and saw that it was the top of a long bolt, which went through the statue’s belly and out his back. It was screwed into a fitting buried in the cement floor beneath the manger. You’d have needed a crowbar to get him out, maybe even a backhoe.
So I guess it wasn’t a miracle. Then again, maybe it was, because if ever there was a miraculous solution to a tricky problem, this was it.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
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