The Artful Trade

This week near Bethlehem, Pa. in the middle of the night, a woman approached a Nativity scene outside a local church. Surveying the deserted street around her, she crept into the manger drawn to the porcelain statue of the Baby Jesus. She gently picked up the statue,cradling it. Then looking both ways,she slipped it beneath her coat and hurried away. The next night a nervous young man, who spent his entire life savings on a ring, fell to his knees in Times Square. He was about to ask the only girl he ever loved to save from loneliness. To marry him. As he stammered and reached for the ring it slipped from his hands, rolled away and disappeared into the black beneath a subway grate. The following morning a little girl in Mexico carefully wrote a Christmas letter to Santa Claus. The letter said that the girl's mother worked three jobs. That she was tired and sometimes late at night the girl could hear her crying. The letter asked, 'Please Santa can you send something br