Texana Thursday: George’s Christmas Project

NOTE: Richard Morehead was a long-time reporter and columnist for the Dallas Morning News. In 1982, Eakin Press published a collection of his columns, Richard Morehead’s Texas. One of his columns was about my late grandfather, George Slaughter Sr., and his Christmas activities that remind us all of what this holiday is really about.

Morehead’s book has long been out of print; he died in 2003. My grandfather died in 2004. But I reproduce the column here to remember both men, and to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas.

George’s Christmas Project

By Richard Morehead, Dallas Morning News

A Christmas that George Slaughter remembers best is the one when both sheep gave birth to lambs right there in the manger scene.

It wasn’t on the program for the nativity exhibit which Slaughter sets up every Christmas at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church in West Austin. But the two baby lambs did add a nice touch.

This blessed event drew international attention when the news wire services reported it, and friendly letters came from all over.

The nativity scene at Windsor and Exposition is an annual labor of love for George and the good shepherds who participate. Slaughter has been doing it for more than 20 years. He spends one whole day gathering the livestock, over a 100-mile route. The exhibit runs from December 21 through Christmas Eve, and each Christmas Day Slaughter spends about another six or seven hours returning the animals and poultry to their owners.

In a typical year he borrowed a trailer at his sister’s ranch near Dripping Springs, drove six miles to pick up a couple of sheep at Hardie Bowman’s, then 18 miles to a stable that owns a pet burro named Eeyore, and called Don-Keyote by some youngsters.

Eeyore is no ordinary animal. He was imported from England. Flew over in an airplane. George said Eeyore looks like a good deal like the Mexican donkeys of the Southwest, with just a touch more class. The animal is named, of course, for the famous A.A. Milne donkey of children’s books.

A dairy farm several miles distant provides a calf. Ducks and chickens are sometimes added as needed, as the recipes say.

This menagerie for four days and nights occupies a pen put up annually across the street from Good Shepherd Church. George and a couple of church employees put up the pen, complete with manger.

A doll is used for the manger child, but the other characters are real. Five persons serve in one and one-half hour turns for each of two crews nightly. Some nights the weather is so bad the shepherds, Mary, and Joseph must use hand warmers as they stand beneath a plastic awning. Dozens of people participate in the scene during its four-day run, as motorists and pedestrians stop to admire the exhibit.

For a few years, George doubled as a shepherd but now his assignment is only to gather the livestock.

He got into this project originally because the Slaughters live on a farm that 20 years ago was 10 miles from Austin but now borders the city limits. The only animals they have around home these days are pets, for George is busy managing a large meat processing plant and other properties as well as spending many hours in charitable activities.

One year a borrowed duck disappeared from the pen. The surmise is that some heathen filched the duck for Christmas dinner, but the bird reappeared two days later as mysteriously as it had departed.

One reason we mention George Slaughter and his Christmas project, is that at this season many persons turn thoughts towards things spiritual and good-hearted.

George does it the year around. The phrase “let George do it” could have been coined for our friend Slaughter. He spends a lot of time every month in church and civic work, because he thinks it is important. The Slaughters are an old family in Austin and have long given freely of themselves to make this a better community.

While others of us take Christmas Day off, after dinner is eaten and the gifts opened at the Slaughter household, George hitches up the trailer and drives to Good Shepherd to return the nativity livestock to their owners.

He sometimes needs some help with Eeyore, George said, because the donkey is more than a one-man loading job.