Christmas in Oklahoma

Oklahoma is a great place with great people. They are warm and friendly and full of unexpected enthusiasms. Visitors to our state always have surprises waiting for them in new customs and novel ways of doing things.

For example, a friend of mine from up North recently visited over the Christmas holidays. Oklahomans love the holidays. Houses are aglow with Christmas cheer -- literally, as holiday lights sometimes threaten to collapse roofs and overload the electrical grid.

Anyway, this friend was admiring the holiday displays, but he was confused by one Nativity scene. There were all the usual suspects: the baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the Shepherds. But there were also these three firemen standing right there next to the manger. He was completely befuddled by firemen in the middle of a nativity scene while they seemed perfectly natural to me.

"That's lovely," he said to me. "But aren't the firemen, uh, a little non-traditional?"

"Why, no," says I. "They are mentioned right there in the Bible!"

My friend look puzzled. "I don't recall firemen being in the Bible..."

"Sure, sure," I interrupted. "You know. It says there were these three wise men who came from a far."