The Ransom
No couch, no boxed nativity scene. Everything gone but a note pinned to the wall.
It was a list of demands and threats. They had the main couch now and wanted the cushions that go with it and they were willing to go to extreme lengths to get them, including damage to the holy crib.
This would not be featured on MTV.
The ransom note was not made using the usual cutouts from various magazine pieces pasted on paper using rubber gloves.
No.These culprits were even more devious.
Obvious regular viewers of every CSI episode, they were clued into every possible criminal mistake (from CSI Miami to CSI Barstow).
The fact was they actually took back cutouts from chocolate Advent calendars and several of the more literate chocolate figures to spell out their terse demands (the one thing never used in any of the 16 currently running CSI programs).
Here is what we were able to make out from the Advent patches and chocolates:
“We have couch and we want pads”“Holding Holy Family ransom”
“Call the police and the baby Jesus buy’s the farm.” (there is some technical extrapolation here as a a chocolate coin was placed just after a picture of a carrier pigeon and the words "baby Jesus" from a cutout. At the end, after the chocoloate coin was a chocolate Advent farm scene. We got the gist.)
After decoding the above we realized what we really needed was some very serious forensic help.
So I called CBS.
*******
CBS sent a team ("CSI San Francisco"…they are still in training) and despite all being actors, they came willingly and immediately poured over the ransom note for further details in a way that was uncanny.
The CSI/CBS results were not good.
Major fact: These thieves wanted those cushions at any cost.
Once fully decoded, by actors playing forensic experts, it was determined that the real demands were as follows and in this order:
1) Every hour that the cushions are not delivered one of the livestock would be sacrificed. The CSI/CBS team was actually hopeful about this because the smell of roasted meat is easier to detect in more vegetarian/vegan areas like Marin than, say in San Antonio, Texas (where the show was rumored to have been originally scheduled). They thought we might be able to sniff out the culprits in a few days.
2) After that, they would move on to the shepherds. As one put it, “so typical…class struggle and all” then on to the wise men, who were, no doubt, not feeling too wise at this time. I could almost hear Baltshazar chewing out the other two, "Didn't I TELL YOU to check the stars for stuff like this? Shoddy work gentleman. No Exit Strategy!? What were you thinking?"
3) Then, worse, after dispatching the wise men (The Koresh character will be the hardest), they would move on to the Holy Family itself if their demands for the two cushions were not met.
4) Joseph would go first. Even these hoodlums had gotten down to the “core narrative” faster than most biblical scholars and figured out that Joseph was, from the beginning, essentially odd man out. Let’s face it, even a surface reading shows this guy gets beat out for the girl by God Himself. Worse, (for him), he’s a carpenter by trade…so he gets the Mafia treatment, finger by finger (by nail clippers) sent by the captors. “Build cabinets now!” would be their natural mentality.
5) Mary? The CSI/CBS forensic team actually thought the captors would be a little afraid of her. Not a woman to be messed with and they also reasoned, (though most of them were from Julliard) that since (in my set) she looked a lot like Olivia Hussey in her prime (and in a Franco Zeffirellian sense), the captors would probably be constantly stunned. You don’t mess with the Madonna. Not the original one. Not the current one.
6) And the baby Jesus? Well He'd be the Big Prize. All the acting CSI/CBS team agreed: no cushions and we’d never see the baby Jesus again.
We considered all the options, and then thanked the team and wished them well in their future competition with the other 16 CSI programs currently airing.
After having done my research (see above) we poured over our options.
Surely, to ignore their demands would be worse for Jesus than being eaten sweetly in Naples, or ignored by llamas and a duck. It would be worse than having a meaningless article go out all over the country that says absolutely nothing of any substance at all about Him (mind you I have not finished reading the Time article, I was too busy throwing up).
It would also be, in fact, worse than having the Beckhams overseeing the baby Jesus who would, in the Spring (when Jesus was probably born) have to relocate to Madrid and be in constant danger of being gored.
Isn’t one piercing enough?
We also realized that somehow this little figure laying in a feeding trough is a symbol of something so far beyond the madness around us. And if you actually go back to the possible day, and could see his fresh flesh and feel the reality before they made this whole thing into either a whorish joke, or a stupid pageant devoid of meaning, you might just be willing to go without a couch with cushions and just bring all you are into that cold barn and worship someone so full of love and light.
The real Jesus provided the answer once I got down to the core narrative. “If a man asks for your shirt, give him your coat as well. If you are asked by those in power to walk a mile, go two.”
The conclusion seemed obvious. If a man (or men…had to be at least three…two on the couch, one for the creche, or perhaps two very big men with the creche box on top. Or maybe three really buff women. There is a "women’s only" gym at the bottom of the big hill we live on. Anyway, at least two. But I digress).
"If a man asks for your couch, give him the cushions.”
I think we got that right.
Give them the cushions!
And in return, we (might) get Jesus back.
The story continues:
Maugham
Malraux's 
Coffeehouse Diaries
Just the Facts