Exit 37 Route 80 Rockaway Jesus

A few years back, Rockaway NJ was the epicenter of one of the biggest Christian conflicts this state has ever experienced when the decision was made relocating the very urban Christ Church from Montclair to rustic, sedated, Rockaway. I’m assuming since it hasn’t been much in the paper much lately, that it has calmed down and a recent trek to the local Christian bookstore gave no indication that the controversy was still a brewing.

Once inside the store, I was immediately drawn to the plethora of Kneeling Santa statues and figurines. Now I realize that Christians have been trying to reconcile the whole Santa-in-Christmas thing but I did find Santa kneeling at our Savior’s cattle troth a bit odd, if not creepy.

A soft-spoken Sunday schoolish-looking sales person approached me. "Do you know the story of Santa and baby Jesus?" she asked. At first I thought she was kidding, but she looked way too sincere. I thought for a moment that perhaps she held the secret why in my hometown, Santa is right there at the manger (along with Sponge Bob and a few of Snow White’s Dwarfs).

So right there in the middle of the Family Christian Bookstore I heard the most amazing story in which I’ll give you the very abridged version:

Santa finds a young boy asleep in some hay/Santa wakes the young boy up/young boy wants to see how Santa makes the toys/Santa slips on ice/ breaks his leg/there’s a lost reindeer/young boy moves in with Santa/young boy makes Santa a pair of crutches/boy instructs the elves to modify the sleigh to be more like a chaise lounge/Santa delivers presents with the boy on Christmas eve/Santa finishes his rounds but boy insists he has one more stop/boy shows Santa where he was born/Santa hobbles to a stable filed with animals, wise men, Mary and Joseph/Santa kneels to worship the baby.

And I thought the story of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer was strange. She looked me in the eye and said, "Of course this is not historically correct."
　
But alais,
Phil 2:10 …at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

Exit 11 GSP Sayreville Missing Jesuses

By Mary Jo Patterson
Religion News Service

Sayreville, N.J. - Detectives investigating the theft of a baby Jesus statue
from an outdoor Nativity scene at a Sayreville church followed a trail on Monday (Jan. 2, 2008) that led them to the missing statue -- and 26 other baby Jesus figurines.

Police said they assumed all 27 statues had been stolen, although they did
not know from where.

Police spread the figurines out on a counter at police headquarters to take
inventory. All lay, in swaddling clothes, on their backs.

"It looks like a nursery here," said police spokesman Ken Kelly.

The figurines, most of them plastic, were found stashed "in plain view" in a
car parked outside the home of Christopher Olson, 18, of Old Bridge,
N.J.,police said.

The discovery brought relief to the parishioners of St. Stanislaus Church,
who had taken the theft of their statue very hard, according to the Rev. Ken
Murphy, their pastor.

The theft, as well as the theft of a smaller baby Jesus from the church's
school and the toppling of a 15-foot crucifix in the church's cemetery, took
place late last week (Dec. 30 or 31).

By late Monday, word of the baby Jesus stash had begun to circulate in Old
Bridge.

Lou Saverese, a resident of the street where the car was found, said a
mystery had been solved. About three weeks before Christmas, he said, the
baby Jesus in his Nativity scene disappeared.

"My wife thought the wind might have taken it away, but then we noticed
other people on the block were also missing their baby Jesus," he said.
Then, in a park down the road, he saw two more plastic Jesus figures hanging
from a telephone pole. Police cut them down.

Rev. Murphy said it best: "As I told people ..., the most important thing is, we celebrated the birthof Jesus," he said. "Jesus is in many different places. If they saw the display and saw he wasn't there, they would be reminded that he is in them."

John 15:4" Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.