O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

(I’m pretty sure a donkey pooped on me)

It’s that time of year again, CHRISTMAS TIME!!! Some of you have a countdown to your Christmas program, some of you have a countdown to the day after your Christmas program, and some of you still have a countdown to Christmas itself. Whichever person you might be, Merry Christmas!! (Please pardon any excessive exclamation point usage, as no exclamation points were harmed in the making of this post.)

If you’ve done production for any length of time you have the famous or legendary production stories. Everyone has them. We should dedicate a website to writing them out. We can call it Production WikiLeaks (if this exists, I didn’t know. If it comes online after this post, I expect royalties of some sort. Except people are leaking their own stories, intentionally, so no one is harmed in the making of these leaks.) Where everyone can share his or her embarrassing stories. Like the time we had a six-digit projector fall from 25 feet in the air to it’s ultimate demise. To put it in economic terms for someone, I said, you could equate it to picking up my house (housing was cheap in Southwest Missouri) with the cars in the garage and dropping it to its death.

Well, Christmas time is no short of these stories. Like the year we decided to attempt a live nativity and we asked for donkeys. At one campus we received a mule (which I found out is a donkey and a horse bred together). This mule was taller than me and had “US” branded on its hindquarters. It was a decorated military mule (I did not verify this, but was told this by multiple sources, although in journalistic integrity, probably all heard it from one source). At the first rehearsal this mule walked half way across the stage with Joseph, but then it led Joseph back out the stage from the way it came. Joseph didn’t stand a chance.

While we had that going on, at the other campus, that donkey didn’t even make it to stage because of all the concrete. One of our staff tried to shove it into the backstage from behind and got pooped on in the process.

While back at the original campus mentioned earlier, we did get that mule switched out for an actual donkey. Although by the time services came this donkey was tired of being kept in a tight backstage space and started kicking holes in the wall and into trees we had custom made for a part of the service.

Moral of the story, be wise with those animals at Christmas and remember the real reason for the season. Your program will end, people’s lives will be changed (Lord willing), and you’ll spend Christmas (this year on a Sunday) at church worshiping the Savior who came to save us. Even if sometimes we need saving from the programs we are putting on about the reason for the season.

Merry Christmas!