D.E. Bartley Scifi sunday's with the Hipriestess

ONCE UPON A TIME…God celebrated the very first christmas,

He was a good father who had two Sons. The eldest Lucifer and the young one, Jesus. The father spoiled his oldest son, who was never satisfied with the things his dad did for him. As hard as his father tried to please his oldest boy, the harder the son seemed to complain and throw fits
and exclaim that he loved his brother more….

The younger son, Jesus was rather unassuming and, as you might imagine, did not receive the same attention from his father as the older boy did. The younger boy seemed perfectly happy with whatever his dad gave him. In fact, the boy often made better of the circumstances than they actually appeared…

ONE DAY…

JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS EVE, God the father decided he was going to do something really spectacular for his boys. He had worked many hours of overtime and saved quite a large sum of money to buy expensive gifts for his sons. As he began his scouring all of creation for the ‘perfect gift’, he soon realized that his oldest son would not be happy with just one big gift, so he bought the boy two. Then, after picturing in his mind the older boy’s reaction to only receiving two gifts on Christmas morning, the dad bought three, then four, then five, and so on, until all his resources were spent.

Feeling quite pleased with himself at having bought so many perfect gifts for his oldest son, God, the father suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to purchase even a single gift for his youngest boy. The dad felt ashamed and embarrassed at this oversight. An overwhelming sense of panic struck him like a lightning bolt as he thought of his little boy having no gift to open on Christmas day!

Out of money and with time running out, the father began driving around the block in search of something…. ANYTHING! to give to his youngest son as a gift. Just before he headed back into town, he spotted a German Shepard out for a walk with his owner.

‘Aha!’ he thought. ‘Perhaps I can find a suitable gift there for my little boy.’

With a sliding stop on the shoulder of the road, he leapt from his great chariot and began searching for something of value to give his younger son. He looked in vain, finding nothing suitable as a present.

WISHING NOT TO GO HOME empty-handed, the dad was suddenly aroused by the potent aroma of a handsomely large, pile of freshly deposited dog doo, He had an idea! Rushing back to his car, he shifted some of the store-bought gifts around to different bags. Taking an empty paper sack, he trotted back to the pile of dog shit, and carefully scooped it into the bag. He was quite proud of himself for the skill he deployed in retrieving the ‘special gift’ because it looked as if the German Sheppard had deposited its waste contents into the bag, personally.

RELIEVED AT LAST, the father sped home and spent the next several hours wrapping the various purchases in shiny new paper, trimming each parcel with ribbon and bows and cute name placards (all addressed to Lucifer , of course!) Once again, due to his emphasis on his older son, the dad ran out of paper and trimmings for Jesus’s only gift.

EXHAUSTED BEYOND BELIEF, the dad simply folded the top of the paper sack over twice, ran several staples through to hold it shut, and quickly scrawled his younger son’s name on one side of the bag in pencil. Then, guilt-stricken once again, he quickly shifted what blame he could for this fiasco, by adding the words ‘From Santa’ under his son’s name. Then he shoved the bag to the most remote corner under the tree and crawled off to bed for a few hours of rest.

AND THE BOYS AWOKE EARLY. Rushing into the semi-darkness of the living room, to the foot of the beautifully decorated Christmas tree, Lucifer shoved his little brother, Jesus aside and flung himself headlong into the mountain of gifts addressed to ‘only’ him. In a whirlwind of shredded paper and peals and outbursts of spontaneous delight, he tore into every gift in record-breaking time. There must have been 50 presents ripped open by the eldest child!

AND TRUE TO HIS PLEASANT DISPOSITION the oldest boy, after dumping the contents of the last gift unceremoniously onto the carpet, shifted his expression of glee into a horrible twist of a scowl and screamed at the top of his voice,

‘IS THAT ALL I GOT?!!!’ His father stood in the afterglow of this warm reception in something akin to a stupor. He was, in fact, speechless.
JUST THEN…

Jesus , who had been sitting patiently in anticipation of the wonderful gift(s) he would open, turned and asked his father, ‘Daddy, what did you get for me?’

A nuclear war head could not have pierced the father’s heart with more ferocity than the words his little boy spoke. Feeling like all the blood was draining from his trembling body, still unable to talk, the dad pointed a shaky finger to the dark shadows at the farthest point beneath the tree. This was too much to bear! The father began sobbing uncontrollably at the sight of his little Jesus eagerly and gingerly pulling the paper sack out from under the tree. His son had an expression on his face as if the bag were filled with the most precious gift on earth!

SLOWLY AND WITH GREAT CARE the younger son removed each staple. As he read the message on the outside, tears welled up in his eyes, as he excitedly proclaimed, ‘Daddy, it’s from Santa!!!’

THE LITTLE SON’S FACE did not change expression, even as the unpleasant odor of the bag’s contents escaped into the room like a bursting dam. He peeked into the bag and paused…. (The father felt his own heart stop beating at that very instance.)

HIS RIGHT EYEBROW RAISED EVER SO SLIGHTLY once the boy recognized the shapely pile that was his new gift.

‘OH, FATHER!! OH, FATHER!!’ the boy cried with great joy.

‘Oh how wonderful, Daddy, I almost got a dog!”

Lucifer was green with envy, he pursed his upper lip, then pouted and cried,
“You love him more than me!”

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