'Dingoes Ate My Baby Jesus!'

'And unto us, a child is...um...born. Hmm, wasn't there a paper mache baby here a minute ago? What the fuck?!'

Baby Jesus Stolen!

from Sploid

Like the toasty smell of chestnuts and the tinkling of sleigh bells, reports of drunken vandals destroying holiday decorations let us all know that Christmastime is truly here again.

Even though the destruction of colored lights, Christmas trees and especially those outdoor nativity scenes has been a yuletide tradition dating back to the last century, most Americans simply never believe something so horrible could happen to them.

The most bizarre Holy Infant abduction of the year happened in Draper, Utah, where local pastor Harry Berg returned home to find the Jesus doll missing from the front yard's nativity scene.

The Christian preacher also found a picture of King Herod taped to the nativity scene...and both Mary and Joseph were blindfolded.

"And the note said King Herod has taken your Baby Jesus," the pastor told KUTV in Salt Lake City. Jesus was being held at the South Mountain Bridge.

Berg called the cops, who found the tortured figure dripping with red nail polish, like little crucifixion wounds.

"It kind of rattled us to the bone," the shaken preacher said. Since then, criminals have been regularly dumping sacks of stinking garbage on his nativity scene.

The vandals were just as twisted in Billings, Montana, where they struck the elaborately decorated home of Bill and Sheryl Duke. The horrified homeowners found their lighted reindeer "in compromising positions," Mrs. Duke told the Billings Gazette. A snowman was killed, too, and many strings of lights were smashed.

"You wonder why," Mrs. Duke said.

The Enchanted Forest of Lamar, Colorado, is a beloved local tradition. Each year, volunteers from the Chamber of Commerce spend weeks turning a section of forest into a winter wonderland where delighted youngsters can even meet Santa Claus.

But this year, the once enchanted forest turned "dark and grim," according to the Lamar Daily News. Heartless vandals struck on Thanksgiving weekend, stealing the lights and electrical cords and splashing Santa's workshop with foul green paint. The criminals left behind an ugly chain of empty beer cans and booze bottles.

Operating under cover of darkness and alcohol-fueled courage, vandals are usually long gone before their awful work has even been discovered.

Meanwhile in Jacksonville, Florida, residents are living in fear of an apparently well-organized gang that systematically destroys the community's holiday decorations and holiday cheer.

At least two homes were struck by knife-wielding vandals who slashed those inflatable Christmas figures seen on so many lawns these days. At yet another home, a lighted reindeer was ripped from the ground and left for dead.

"I saw that my lighted deer had been thrown out into the street, broken and just lying there," a tearful Sally Webster told News4Jax.com.

Unlike in most situations, the Christmas violence and insanity isn't contained within the borders of the United States. In nearby Canada, people of that country have been shocked by the theft of the Baby Jesus from Old Montreal's nativity scene. Earlier, vandals had broken off the Holy Infant's fingers - leaving only the middle finger in a vulgar salute.

"I know there are problems in society, but to steal Baby Jesus is a cheap shot," Michel Beauregard told the Montreal Gazette after he saw the tragic scene.

"We put up the crèche on Wednesday and the very next morning - salut, bonjour, vandals," Beauregard continued, using the bitter sarcasm French speakers rely upon to show their disappointment with life.

And far away in England, a community's "festive cheer" was destroyed by thieves who stole a "charity box" from a Christmas display. It is apparently common in England to put a collection box outside, where neighbors can leave money for a good cause. The vandals not only made off with the cash, but they later came back and threw the rest of the display over the fence of 78-year-old pensioner Ivy Garner's garden. Worse, the three young vandals smashed the glass on Garner's "notice board," whatever that is.

Yet even the worst case of drunken teenaged vandalism can't compete with the grinches at Bartlett Public Library in Memphis, Tennessee.

While the librarians don't seem to mind Santa and have put up decorations in favor of non-Christian things such as Chanukah and Kwanzaa, they refuse to allow a Baby Jesus figure inside the library.

They've allowed a nativity scene - the manger and some animals - but Jesus and his mom and dad are banned.

"To have Christmas without the baby Jesus would be kind of like having Graceland without Elvis there," said local Christian activist Brandi Chambless, who keeps trying to sneak in a Jesus.