To celebrate having an apartment that could once again seat more than two people, we had some friends over on Saturday night. Evidently forgetting that our bones are ten years older than they used to be, we threw caution to the wind and plowed through what must've been a fourteen gallon bottle of Jager. After six hours of poker, bullshitting, Christmas music and various side trips, the last thing I remember is everyone watching Pee-wee's Christmas Special and me slurring to my friend to "stay awake for the Little Richard part...oh man the Little Richard part." I, however, did not stay awake, and spent most of Sunday reminding myself that, as a fifty-year-old, I can no longer drink wheelbarrows full of alcohol.
Somewhere along the way, one of us got the brilliant idea to drive to a local church's live manger, even though it was past 2 AM by that point. I've written about this manger before, but I have to admit -- however sacrilegious, it's a lot more fun to sneak into church mangers with live animals when you're crocked in the middle of then night than to do it in the afternoon with a bunch of kids shoving you aside so they can have the better "llama petting position."
During "open hours," the manger consists of what I'd guess you'd call an open garage connected to a small, hay-covered field. In the middle of the night, though, it's just a garage. We didn't have to break in or anything -- the door on the side of the garage/barn was wide open, so I don't feel like I need to Hail Mary my ass out of purgatory. Or at least, I didn't until I started interrogating the various ostriches and goats. "Where were YOU on the night of the 11th, OSTRICH?! We know what you did, GOAT!" Things like that -- drunken stupid things.
Since this was a real church's manger/nativity, the religious statues weren't of the plastic, goofy-faced variety. These were the hardcore statues. The big ones. The haunting ones. The kind you cock your head at and try not to blink, because you're sure they'll wink at you or something if you just look at them long enough.
There were all sorts of animals in there, and only now do I realize that we probably shouldn't have been feeding them just because they was an open bag of manger animal food laying in the barn. Oh well, at least we threw some dolla dolla bills y'all into the donation box. I'll never know for sure if these animals come on loan from the zoo each year or if they retire to an underground utopian animal society from January-November, but for what it's worth, they were fucking friendly animals. How many times can you say "c'mere goat" and actually have it be paid off?
Fun times. We didn't stay for too long because we kind of knew we weren't supposed to be there, and there's only so long you can tempt fate before a lightning bolt hits you in the head.
On Sunday, I woke up very very late, and realized that if I had any interest in getting a Christmas tree this year, it was probably time to do so. I'll tell you about that later, but the story involves another manger. It wasn't a church's manger this time, so the nativity's Jesus was less granitey goodness and more plastic with a light-up face.
Posted by Matt on 12/18/2006. E-mail me!
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Those looked like good times. I too spent Saturday night playing poker- I came in second. Damn! 
I had this Jager in Croatia when I was in the Army and I swear it had a hallucinant in it because I kept seeing a penguin walking around the beach. It turns out there was a coke promotion with a penguin on a billboard. All I can recall is doing a very poor Adam Sandler “It’s too damn hot out here for a penguin. We need to put you in a zoo.” I can only imagine what the locals were thinking.
I can honestly say that 90% of my “bad drinkin’” nights started with three shots of Jaeger. It doesn’t matter what you drink after that, because you can’t taste it anyway.
As for Live Nativies, I used to live in beautiful, historic Ocean Grove NJ, which is one of the few remaining active Methodist Camp Meetings left in the country. Crazy town, the church owns all the land and people lease it from them. It’s all Victorian and pretty and just plain odd as there is a real dichotomy between the Campies and the rest of the town. Anyway, they do a Live Nativity and Train Show every Christmas season. But they only get a couple of live animals — no llamas, just a couple of goats and a cow that got lose a couple of years back and escaped the Great Auditorium to go graze on the lawn. But the bizarre thing is, they dress up the kids as animals. One year, my neighbor’s kids ended up as the front and back ends of different camels. They even hung angels from the ceiling the last time I went — and I’m talking about live people too.
Oh, and Matt — Watch out for those Nativity animals. You know they all get to talk at Midnight when Christmas Eve turns to Christmas. They might decide to spend their one shot at verbal communication for the year on diming you out.