Free The Judge Who Stole Christmas by Randy Singer Page A

about Christian martyrs. It’s about time somebody stood up to our own government, Thomas thought.
    It’s about time to put the X back in Xmas .

    Jasmine left her exam and headed straight for her apartment, calling Ottmeyer’s cell phone on the way. She left a message with the town attorney and another on the Hammonds’ home answering machine. While driving, she flipped from one radio station to another but couldn’t find anything about the hearing. It was driving her crazy not to know.
    She grabbed the remote as soon as she got inside her apartment and started flipping through the channels before even removing her winter coat. The noon news had just started and the nice-looking brunette on channel 3 led off with the manger story.
    â€œIn a controversial ruling issued just minutes ago, Judge Cynthia Baker-Kline deemed another holiday display on the Possum town square unconstitutional. Her ruling has infuriated conservative activists, who claim that Baker-Kline has ignored controlling Supreme Court precedent and distorted the very history of Christmas.”
    Wording from the Court’s opinion suddenly filled the screen as the anchor read along. “‘The Puritans outlawed Christmas celebrations because they thought the birth of Christ was too sacred an event to be associated with such a secular celebration,’ Judge Baker-Kline wrote. ‘Likewise, I am convinced that Christmas is, by definition, a religious holiday celebrating the nativity of Christ. I also find that the Possum town square celebration in question, though it had many secular trimmings, was still a religious display on public property. Like the Puritans, I find myself constrained to rule it illegal.’”
    The news then flashed to video footage of Pete Winkle soliciting signatures for his Impeach the Judge petition. “It’s judicial tyranny plain and simple,” Winkle was saying. “And I don’t care what the Puritans did.”
    Five minutes later Theresa Hammond called and confirmed that things were every bit as bleak as the television news made them out to be. “You’ve got to talk with Thomas,” she said. “He said he’s not going to take the court’s ruling lying down.”

TUESDAY NIGHT, DECEMBER 12
    Thomas arrived at the town square while it was still light. The night before, he and Theresa had been up until two in the morning tracing and cutting life-size manger figures out of plywood. Though Theresa hadn’t been happy about it, she had done a wonderful job painting the donkey, the sheep, the ox, the shepherd, and of course, the Virgin Mary. In Thomas’s opinion, the Virgin Mary looked a little bit like one of Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters, but other than that, the figures were easily recognizable. Besides, Scripture never said that Mary was easy on the eyes.
    He carted the plywood figures out of his truck and attached wooden bases made of two-by-fours in the shape of an X. As he hauled the figures over to his usual spot on the square, carrying two at a time, the shepherd slipped from Thomas’s grasp and landed on the hard ground right on the crook of the shepherd’s staff, snapping the plywood at a particularly thin point. Fortunately, Thomas had a few rolls of duct tape kicking around in the back of his truck, and it didn’t take him any time at all to fix the staff.
    Around 5:30, just as darkness was falling, Thomas placed Bebo in the makeshift straw-lined cradle that he had built out of old two-by-fours and leftover pieces of plywood. He turned on the spotlight that he had hooked up to a Walmart car battery and took his place next to the plywood Mary.
    A few folks who had watched him assemble his set told him how nice it looked. For some reason, they hung around after Thomas turned on the spotlight, perhaps waiting to see if he might be thrown in jail. Soon they were joined by a few other passersby. As folks gathered, many would tell him