Not only was my college Christmas a time for miracles but In my sophomore year it became the most magical in the history of my dear Alma Mater.   I stopped commuting my sophomore year and moved into Mullica hall, the new one of the two men’s dorms on campus (Why? The main reason, commuting I was missing most of the “college life” (another term for getting dates and drinking booze - there were seven women’s dorms on campus!  This greatly improved my chances of actually living the college life).

And celebrating the coming Christmas break after final exams was one of the best events in the semester.  And my first proved to be one that became a once in a lifetime event for the 100 guys in our dorm.  After we returned from Thanksgiving the semester raced to it’s conclusion and it was time to decorate. The student government sponsored an annual decorating contest and we, the new kids on the block, were determined to win on our first try.  We had a meeting in our lounge and our first idea was to solicit paid spies who would check out the competition and we would wait for their report and then produce a “winning” design.  At our next meeting the surveillance results proved to be daunting - we needed something special to take the prize.  After an hour of brain-storming that got nowhere Steve, a senior proclaimed - “Leave it all to me…I guarantee we will win!”  And we gladly did because we all were devoid of another plan.  Plus, Steve had produced several great beer parties that fall in a nearby farmer’s barn.

The very next night a red ribbon tied to a pine branch appeared on each of our doors. But the fact was this wasn’t much of an award-winning effort. Many of us grumbled and I was resigned to the fact that this would not be our year.  Nothing more was acomplised until the evening before the judging when fully decorated flocked trees appeared on each floor; a giant one in our lounge and each hallway was “decked” with boughs of holly and blinking lights.  Everyone was totally amazed.  And the next day we won the prize with a Proclamation that our efforts (Steve’s that is) were the best in the long history of the contest. 

Several days later we learned how this had taken happened.  On the dorm bulletin board was a news article from the local weekly paper.  “City’s Decorations DIsappear and Reappear” was the lead story about how someone had “stolen” trees and decorations from the Annual Christmas Tree Charity Sale in the lot next to our town's police headquarters and then they were mysteriously returned the next night. How this was done and no suspects have been discovered.         Steve and his "committee" never mentioned or admitted that they were the perps that pulled off what would be known as the “Great Christmas Caper”.

Ahd we never asked.  But we did lose a bit of our confidence in our local police department.