Not Wearing Socks

'Well, I don't think it's funny.' 

The first voice was a bit rusty, maybe not used to being used that much.

The second voice was a lot younger. 'You've got no sense of humour, that's your problem.'

'I like to say things as I find them,' the first voice insisted. 'And I say they don't wear socks.'

The announcement was met with silence, so the first speaker repeated: 'No socks. Dirty feet in dirty sandals. You've got to get it right.'

'Well, all right,' the second voice said. 'But it wouldn't rhyme.'

'Humph!' the first voice snorted. 'Rhyme, fal-de-lals, artistic nonsense.'

'Do you call a sky full of angels artistic nonsense?'

'Ah. There you have me. I must say He can put on a good show.' First voice sighed with loud contentment. 'And that was a good show. Glorious. Glory...'

'Don't sing!' second voice said quickly, urgently.

'Oh, don't worry. Nobody pays any heed to sheep. Off they went to Bethlehem, to see the new-born king, leaving us behind...' The old sheep made a croaking noise, a rusty kind of laugh. 'And we got the best concert in the whole world: a sky full of angels singing to us!'

'I thought you said nobody pays any heed to sheep?' the younger one demanded crossly.

'Ah well,' the old sheep said. 'I meant people. There are people who think they're important, and they boss around the people they think aren't important, and they boss around the people further down... and so on, down to the people and the animals - like sheep - that they think don't matter at all. But what happened that night changed everything. A king born in a stable not a palace! Sending for a bunch of dirty shepherds not wearing socks to pay homage. And a sky full of angels serenading a hillside full of sheep. Not at all what was expected!'

'So why do it that way?' the younger sheep asked. 'When everybody was expecting something different?'

'Because that's what He's like - God, I mean,' the old sheep said. 'He does things His way. And that's not the way of the high-ups and the powerful on Earth. He's a God who notices the little people and cares about them.'

'And us?' the youngest sheep asked.

'And us,' the old sheep agreed. 'That's why He's called the Good Shepherd and he sent His own very special little lamb to us that first Christmas.'

'So it's logical that He'd want shepherds there.'

'With no socks,' came the sharp reminder.

'Do you think God wears socks?' a small persistent voice asked.

'Don't be silly!' the older sheep said. 'Whoever heard of a God wearing socks!' There was a thoughtful pause. 'But He did wear nappies, when He came to Earth as a baby... like any other human baby.'

The old sheep shook its woolly head.

'Amazing, when you think of it. A God who was willing to wear nappies!'

Dorothy Courtis writes fiction and non-fiction under her pen-name Dorothy Stewart. This story came from her collection Mothers, Daughters, Wives published in 2024. She's currently wrestling with plot-lines and clues for the next book in her Somerset Mystery Series.