Dave Barry has been entertaining us for many years, but somehow I overlooked this brief Christmas special (about 100 pages counting vintage pictures) from 2006, complete with pictures of Dave and the place where he grew up-Armonk New York. The story is told from a fictionalized version of Dave as a child's perspective, and it includes his usual hilarious anecdotes. Armonk is in southeastern N.Y. state near the coast, and is a pretty typical small town. Dave grew up the son of an Episcopal minister, and this story is really about the adventures he had at the Episcopal Church Christmas pageant where he played one of the Magi one year, and one of the shepherds the next. Turns out Dave was not the instigator of the mayhem during the pageant but he co-operated with the other two naughty boys. The story involves: 1) bats in the church belfry, 2) loads of bat poop; 3) two dogs; 4) the collapsing of the church ceiling during the second year's pageant, and the messy dynamics of the Barnes family during this period of time, with Dave masquerading as Doug Barnes. Really this has to be a slightly fictionalized version of his own adventures of course.

As a fun and funny out of the ordinary Christmas story I high recommend this to break the routine of the usual Christmas stories. There are points in the story where one ends up crying you've been laughing so hard. And it's a fair picture of growing up in the 50s and 60s, before modern technology took over the world. I highly recommend it as a Christmas present. A good time will be had by all.