Baby Jesus back in manger
Thieves return Nativity scene to NE Heights yard, with note of apology
Baby Jesus was gone again. For the third time in four years, Phylis and Russ Thorson had put up their Nativity scene for the Christmas season only to find baby Jesus away from the manger.
Gone, too, were the large, heavy, ceramic statues of Mary and Joseph, the radiant beams from a plug-in floodlight and the manger itself.
Nothing, apparently, is sacred to thieves.
“My husband and I were on our way to church when we looked and saw they weren’t there,” Phylis Thorson said. “They took it all.”
The thieves pilfered the items sometime between 2 and 6 on the morning of Dec. 8 from the Thorsons’ graveled front yard in the Academy Estates East neighborhood near Spain and Moon NE.
As neighborhoods go, Academy Estates East is a relatively safe one. A quick search on the Albuquerque Police Department’s crime mapping site shows little activity in the area
over the past four weeks — a car theft, a burglary, a couple of disturbingthe-peace calls on nearby streets.
Across the city, electric reindeer, inflatable toy soldiers and the occasional Santa disappear every holiday season, robbed by grinches with hearts two sizes too small. ’Tis also the season for porch pirates, pilfering packages off porches and doorsteps.
But baby Jesus? Dear God.
It has happened before. About three years ago, baby Jesus was stolen from the Thorsons’ manger.
“So I put out a sign saying, ‘Whoever stole baby Jesus, please return him,’” Phylis Thorson said. “And what do you know? Baby Jesus reappeared.”
Two years ago, baby Jesus disappeared again. Once again, Thorson put out her sign. This time the spirit did not move the robber to return the ill-gotten statue.
The Thorsons looked at that as God’s will.
“Whoever took it, I hope they now have Jesus in their hearts, not just in the statue,” she said. “Perhaps they needed Jesus more.”
Last year, the Nativity scene, complete with a new baby Jesus, was untouched.
So this year, the Thorsons again carted out the statues — Joseph stands about 3 feet — and set them up in the front yard, just a few feet away from their flagpole. Then they were gone. Once again, Phylis Thorson put out her sign.
“We guess again this year someone needs Jesus more than we do,” she wrote. “Is the thief(s) anti-Christian? Christianphobic?
The couple’s home security camera had inexplicably gone offline that night, so no footage of the Nativity nabbing exists.
But the camera caught something else four nights later.
In the wee hours Thursday, the statues were returned. Security video shows three people, their faces hidden by hoodies, exiting a vehicle, carrying the statues and placing them back where they had been. Phylis Thorson said she thinks the three are young men, based on how quickly they moved and how easily they carried the heavy statues.
The thieves also left a note with the statues, and rarely has a written mea culpa gushed with such contrition.
“Dear Russ and Phylis,” the neatly typewritten note begins. “This letter was written to offer the deepest apology one could muster.”
The letter goes on to say that stealing the Nativity set began as a “prank that went too far” and was not done with malice or prejudice or for any political, ethnic or religious reasons.
“Although words can only go so far hopefully you can find it in your hearts to forgive such acts. Again. The deepest and most sincere apologies. God bless and have a Merry Christmas.”
The note left a lot of questions unanswered — how did the thieves know Russ and Phylis’ names, right down to the unique spelling of “Phylis”? Was the word “again” an admission of serial baby Jesus snatching? And if the prank went too far, how was it supposed to end?
For the Thorsons, the answers don’t matter much. They’re a conservative Christian couple, they say, and they’d like to think that God had something to do with the thieves’ change of heart for the holidays and owning up, at least anonymously, to what they did. They hold no grudges, they say.
In this season of giving, the Thorsons choose the gift of forgiveness.
Let us hope that others choose to leave the gifts and everything else that doesn’t belong to them — including baby Jesus statues — alone.