Pierre the Alligator

By Ethan Brown

Pastor and Minister of Care & Discipleship

The strangest Christmas story I’ve read this year, or perhaps any year, is Heaux, Heaux, Heaux. It takes place in the world of the A Cajun Night Before Christmas in which Santa rides in a swamp skimmer pulled by alligators. Yet while A Cajun Night Before Christmas inventively follows the story we all know, Heaux, Heaux, Heaux begins the day after Christmas when Boudreaux finds that Pierre, one of Santa’s alligators has been left behind. Pierre lives with Boudreaux and his family for a while and even develops a love interest from the swamp. Now I don’t want to spoil your eventual reading of the book, but it provides a unique experience as it carries the normal Christmas story forward into our regular calendar year. As a liturgical church we follow the Church calendar that tells the story of our faith over and over again, but it is easy to make church about “those” days and “those” stories without them ever overlapping our own stories. As we approach the end of Advent I am reminded of the weird existence of Pierre the alligator who would not be confined to his simple Christmas story. How do the stories we tell this month continue to show up and breathe life into your own story? Where do the historic stories of our faith intersect with the story of your faith? In Jesus we find that God’s story and humanity’s story have overlapped and that means God’s story is overlapped with your story as well. God is not confined to our seasons, but continues to walk into the story of your life if we just have the eyes to see.