December 15, 2008
As we prostrate ourselves in front of shopping mall Santa Clauses during this, the holiest time of year, there are always reports of people who, when they aren’t taking their yuletide shitty store return policy frustrations out on those earning a minimum wage, do so in the lot, when seasons beatings result from disputed parking spots.
Holiday season stress also boils over in vandalism directed at front lawns, which, if they happened during other times of the year would result in a garden gnome getting a pummeling usually reserved for mob informants.
[Editor's note: sometimes vandalism takes the form of vigilante justice, such as when someone kicks out blinding holiday lighting strong enough to have seen action during Pink Floyd’s “Wall” tour. (It is also quite tempting to toss a brick on behalf of Al Gore whenever one comes across a holiday display sucking up the wattage like that in the pic below)].
Being that it’s a time of giving though, (and apparently taking too) people have often awoken to find that their nativity scenes are one wise man short of a power trio.
Sometimes these holiday pranks become very serious indeed, as when one Ohio family’s ice skating penguins and Kris Kringle were bombed by local pranksters. In other instances, they are as blasphemous as replacing a nativity Jesus with “Stewie” from “The Family Guy”, or in many cases, walking off with Him altogether. 
Now, the church is fighting back, not with another inquisition, but with high tech.
GPS devices are being offered by BrickHouse Security, a New York-based company lending the hardware and tracking service free of charge to churches and synagogues for the holiday season (Brickhouse Security as a side business, also employ their services to search for the career of one Lionel Ritchie. To listen to the Commodores’ Brick House, click here)
According to the company, they “send an e-mail or text alert and we’ll say, ‘It’s 2 a.m., and your baby Jesus is on the move. Should he be? If not, get your police on the line, and we’ll help track it.””
If it is on the move and a five finger discount is not the immediate cause, well, that just amounts to a Christmas miracle in our books (for not-so-miraculous encounters with JC, check our our Top 10 Jesus Sightings of All Time)
St. Paul tells us in the first Epistle to the Corinthians (who later became known for making fine leather in the 70s) that “thieves shall not inherit the kingdom of God”, and unless that other near divine, Barack Obama does away with current inheritance laws, this likely extends to those who make off with nativity Nazarenes.
