Table
seven wants two lamb cutlets, a chicken salad and a shish kebab; table
nineteen’s complained about dirty cutlery; the couple on table three have
changed their minds again and now want one soup, one smoked salmon; and the
rowdy hooligans on table twenty six are ordering yet more red wine!
Waiters
are calling across the general noise of the kitchen, where the six chefs are
working hard, trying to supply all the food orders that have been taken in the
last few minutes. They’re blanching, sautéing, par-boiling, griddling, searing,
poaching. They were sweating freely and scurrying frantically with frying pans,
wine-skins of cooking sherry, fish heads, legs of lamb and trays of roasted
vegetables. They were trying not to spill scalding pots of reductions,
different sorts of soup or cooking oil. They were de-glazing, stacking,
sprinkling, drizzling, garnishing, refining, presenting and calling for
‘service!’
Add
up the hotel business for yourself: the chefs; the food and wine waiters;
reception staff checking people in; bar staff serving drinks; chambermaids
changing bed linen and cleaning and preparing rooms.
Then
there’s others readying the banqueting suite and the ballroom for the
jollifications later; bellboys, staircase attendants, doormen. Our Reservations
Manager is not popular tonight due to overbooking; and our Conference and
Entertainments Managers are overstretched as well.
Can’t
complain, you know. It’s great for business that ECA[1]
has called for this census and that the place is suddenly flooded with people
wanting rooms. You’d be surprised how few make reservations: they seem to think
that turning up on the off-chance will do. Usually, they’d be right. But
tonight, we’ve had to turn away quite a few.
There
was a party of six members of the Jericho Tentmakers Association, a dozen or
more from the Capernaum Carpet Cleaning Company and a family who’d travelled
all the way from Tyre. They were exhausted!
But
we’re fully booked – over-booked, as I say. That’s the hotel business for you.
One week you’ve got ten guests rattling round the place, and the next you’re
heaving and having to send people up the road to the Jolly Rabbi, over the bridge to Goliath’s
Head, or out by the river at The Red
Lion of Judah. I don’t feel right about sending them randomly to the Pig & Whistle – at least, not Hebrew
folks.
Take
that family that turned up unannounced at about 9 o’clock. The man begged me
for a place to stay since his young wife (or so he called her) was about to
give birth. I took pity on him in the end and sorted out a Z-bed for them in
the laundry. I knew they would be okay in the Napery Manager’s office, because
he’s had to go to Bethany to register for the census himself.
I
looked in on the couple a few minutes ago, and she was right in the middle of
actually having her baby! I quickly called for a midwife, and left them to it.
I couldn’t get involved, you know, partly because I’m squeamish and mostly
because it’s inappropriate for hotel management staff to stand around watching
teenagers giving birth. And it would have taken too much time, and that’s
something of which I’ve got not a lot.
So
I go back to the kitchen and supervise the junior chefs in getting the salad
garnish arranged in the bowls and then get called away because the bar staff are
running low on small change. Then I go back to the kitchen to double-check that
the serving staff were all busy, getting the dinners out into the restaurant
with maximum efficiency.
Some
of the waiters have to be reprimanded because they’ve become distracted by some
sort of a light in the sky – I expect it was a weather balloon or a reflective
cloud, and not a UFO, as they claimed.
No
sooner I get back to reception, than a party of yokels arrived from the hill
region, some carrying lambs and hymn-sheets. One of the pesky blighters had
done a whoopsie (I mean a lamb, not a shepherd) just inside the front door,
which was a nuisance.
I
tell the country bumpkins there’s no room for them, but they insist they are
there to visit one of the guests. I check the names they ask me to find: J
Davidson-Carpenter, of Wood-U-Like Crafts;
Marie de Nazareth; and JCS O’God, but none of those names are on our register.
They start going on about a star, but the only celebrities in the place are the
E-list Magdalen sisters, who have been hired as a kissogram, I think, and have
a booking to do a striptease later in the evening. It finally occurs to me that
the yokels might be looking for the people in the laundry, and as it turns out,
I was right.
I
also send in a tray of finger food (smoked salmon & avocado vol-au-vents,
caviar blinis, tiny samosas, sun-dried tomatoes on parmesan crisps, with some
crudités and dips – you can guess the rest), and add it to the bill.
I
don’t go in myself: it doesn’t seem right to bother the girl after she’s just
delivered her firstborn son among the troughs and washing equipment.
There’s
no room for them in my inn, so she has to lay the baby near a mangle.
Augustus’ decree impacts
mid-winter hospitality businesses
Why did Mary & Joseph settle for a stable? What other choice
did
they have in a place like Bethlehem at such a busy time?
Consider the many sacrifices the Kings made: comfort, security,
life’s
little luxuries, etc, as well as bringing gifts.
Why were they willing to give
them up?
What were they hoping to gain, do you suppose?
What’s Christmas like for you and for your family?
Busyness,
distraction, gift-frenzy, food, drink, entertainment,
over-indulgence; or
taking appropriate time to welcome Christ incarnate?
