A Bogus Christmas Tale for Excitable Children (1)

Jesus was born in that barn in Bethlehem - a painful experience for his virginal mother in those uncomfortable quarters. However, a kind of rapturous state came over her when the pushing began, and she was all right. When they wrapped up her heavenly child and put him in her arms, all notion of pain vanished. She laid him in the manger and looked adoringly down at him. A growing throng of people gathered to admire the child and speculate about the future.

This was in a working barn, of course, and the animals resented this noisy intrusion into their feed trough. A few of them were so bold as to continue eating out of the manger while Jesus lay therein, and that's where the trouble began. You see -- and I hope you aren't disgusted by this -- I'm afraid some bits of placenta and umbilicus and cord blood and amniotic fluid leaked into the hay and grain in the manger, and some animals: well, ( they ate it. )