Special Guest Blogger: A Bethlehem Shepherd

Us shepherds are thought of as the lowest of the low, well, maybe a rung or two above the lame, blind and the lepers but we spent most of our time watching sheep on sparsely populated mountains sides.
Now sparsely populated mountainous regions in the Middle East are ideal locations for growing opium and khat, and shepherding can be a very boring job so while we watched our flocks, we would partake of a few khat leaves so that night when a bright glowing light turned up infront of us, it wasn't the first time.  
Obviously as it wasn't a hot blue alien with four breasts and three eyes this time but an angel, and a guy angel, we just shrugged and carried on nibbling our leaves.
'I am Gabriel and have been sent by God to spread the news that today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you' he said all glowy and floaty before Dave threw his shoe at him mumbling about giant moths but the Angel dude dodged it and said 'He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a your Lord wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger' and pointed over to a stable.
We said we would go later and huffing 'whatever', Angel guy blinked out and Dave went to have a pee behind the tree when three men on camels stopped and asked us if we knew where the Stable with the Lord was.
We followed them over and when we got there they were handing out presents to a young couple and amidst some annoyed looking animals was a baby laying in the feeding trough, as the son of God i expected him to be a bit more luminous or something.  
The choice of gifts raised some eyebrows, too, Myrrh is used as an aphrodisiac and i did wonder how, if they ever wrote a book about this, how a bunch of shady, door-to-door sex toy salesmen showed up for the birth of Christ might need a rewrite Unfortunately, being part of the birth of Christianity didn't do much for us and the era of the Shepherd ended when farmers just figured out that the job could be done better and cheaper by a few bits of wood nailed together into a fence around their fields coupled with the sheep's below-par fence climbing skills, so there wasn't much need for us and with hindsight we maybe should have said or did something because our role in the Nativity became basically the role for children who's parents had a spare tea towel who can't be trusted with speaking parts.