A Christmas Tale of Forgery and Deception

Our buddy Joop told us this tender Christmas Tale in my comments section

when I was a kid, the lady who babysat with us knitted, crocheted and sewed constantly to keep her poor arthritic hands from freezing up. one year she knitted us kids big christmas stockings festooned with our names, birthdates and appropriate seasonal decorations. I still have mine and each year it's "hung by the chimney with care." a great gift from the heart of long ago

This reminded me of something that happened last year, a tale of Yuletide deception. I am not talking about misdirection and Christmas secrets, this was flat out counterfeiting.

One of my fellow graduate students, a somewhat unbending woman named Lauren, accidentally threw out her husband�s treasured Christmas stocking. This, of course, was one of those hand-knitted-with-love-by-grandma stockings that was more sentimental than beautiful.

Grandma had knitted stockings for the entire family and now that Bob�s stocking was missing the set was incomplete.

Now what you need to know is that Lauren and I don't like each other very much. I think she's a controlling bitch, she thinks I am a sodomite slacker. But she comes to me in tears sometime around Thanksgiving last year and begs me to help her. I�m the only person she knows that can knit socks and she wants to know if I can �recreate� Bob�s stocking. She shows me her own stocking as a model. She flatters me mentioning that i am 'so creative'. She offers to pay me

The damn thing really is a fright, knitted from Red Heart acrylic yarn ...I can hear all you knitters booing and hissing Red Heart Yarn, but in this case it was a blessing because Red Heart is more common than dirt...and just about as attractive. Yeah, I am a natural fiber snob, so what? But it gets worse, my dears, much worse, because centered on the stocking is a duplicate stitched Rudolph with googly plastic eyes and a red pom-pom nose. There was some jingle bells and crocheted holly on there too.

I accept the challenge and I swear to you children, a master forger that copies Rembrandts and Vermeers didn�t have the time I had recreating Bob�s missing Christmas stocking. It took me days and many trips to Hobby Lobby, all the time fussing to anyone that will listen that I don�t even like Lauren and that she really needs to come clean with Bob.

I finally finish the stocking and compare it to the Granny created original. Not bad, but mine looks too fresh and clean, so we actually toss it around in the yard for awhile and run it through the laundry to �age� it a little.

I add up the hours I spent on the damn thing and there is no way I can charge the lady for my time. My going rate is pretty high, you know. I just present the forgery to her, asking only that she pass on a good deed to someone else.

We got along much better after that and a few weeks after Christmas, Lauren presents me with a lovely stained glass humming bird that she made. Apparently good old Bob never knew the difference

So, what's the moral of this Christmas parable? Even googly-eyed Rudolphs are beautiful to someone. Deception is Ok if it comes from the heart? No good deed goes unrewarded?

You decide

2 People have told Dr JJ all about it