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Illustrations by Dennis Culverand Tony Fleecs
Layout and design by Kevin Dobruck
Christmas Gecko
Illustrations by Dennis Culver and Tony FleecsLayout and design by Kevin Dobruck
2015 Frontier Press
All rights reserved. Except for fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the permission of the publisher.
November 2015
Copyright © The Salvation Army USA Western Territory
ISBN 978-0-9908776-9-1
Printed in the United States of America on recycled paper
Dedicated to Clarence Ing and the officers
and soldiers of The Salvation Army in Honolulu
who have faithfully presented the Christmas
Nativity Pageant in Manoa for over three decades.
And to my husband, Joe, who without his
encouragement and persistent promotion,this
book would never have seen the light of day.
BLO
OD AND
FIRE
THES A LVATIO N
ARMY
a Little Green Gecko lived
in Hawaii’s Manoa Valley.
He scampered through the
eaves of the Big White House
which stood right next door
to the Waioli Tea Gardens.
any geckos lived in the lush, emerald gardens.
They danced in the daily rains and dined on delicious banquets of insects.
They sang and chirped both night and day.
But the Little Green Gecko didn’t sing.
The Little Green Gecko didn’t chirp.
He didn’t dance in the rain.
He didn’t play with the other geckos.
In fact, he ignored them when they called to him to come and play.
he Little Green Gecko thought all of those things were terribly BORING!
So instead, he hid under the eaves of the Big White House.
When the Great Green Gecko urged all of the other geckos to do their part to help control the mosquitoes in Manoa, the Little Green Gecko ignored him.
He sulked and grumbled.
He refused to help.
“BORING!” the Little Green Gecko quietly said to himself.
He just wanted to stay under the eaves of the Big White House.
So he did.
n a clear December day, the Little Green Gecko watched as a most unusual thing occurred.
The people who lived in the Big White House came home with a large tree tied to the roof of their car.
“That is most unusual,” murmured the Little Green Gecko, crawling closer to get a better look.
he people lifted the tree down from the roof of the car and hauled it to the door of the Big White House. “This is most unusual,” the gecko whispered as he scurried down the wall.
He leaped onto its branches as it passed through the door.
“I must see what they are going to do with this tree,” he muttered to himself as he hid among the pine needles.
The sharp smell of the branches seemed “most unusual” and not at all like the sweet fragrances of the Manoa Valley.
he man set the tree up in front of the corner window.
“This is great!” the Little Green Gecko almost smiled.
“I can take shelter in this tree. I can bask in the sunlight and when it rains, I will be warm and dry.”
ust as he made himself comfortable, the woman who lived in the Big White House tied pieces of colored ribbon and shiny glass balls onto the branches of the tree.
rightened, the Little Green Gecko ran to the uppermost branch of the tree.
Surely he would be safe there.
But at the very top of the tree, a lighted star began to blink off and on, off and on!
s the Little Green Gecko gazed down from his perch at the top of the tree, he watched the woman open a brown box.
She lifted out a small shelter and placed it under the tree.
Next out of the box came a cow, two sheep, and a donkey.
She then set a small trough where the animals could feed.
“They are just my size,” declared the Little Green Gecko.
he carefully positioned two human figures in the shelter, one that looked like the woman and the other that looked like the man.
Next came three shiny figures.
The woman reached in the box one last time, and drew out two children, one holding a tiny lamb in his arms.
wonder what all of this means?” chirped the Little Green Gecko to himself.
“This is most unusual!” So he crawled to a lower branch to see what would happen next.
Suddenly, lights began to twinkle all around him.
“Dum, dum, dah dum,” chimed a music box hanging from a branch above his head.
“Joy to the world,” the woman sang.
“I
ach day, the Little Green Gecko snoozed in the most unusual tree.
When the man and the woman came home, they would light the tree and listen to the sweet music it played
Every night, as the man and the woman slept, the Little Green Gecko crept down to the tiny figures under the tree.
“Most unusual,” he sighed to himself as he kept watch through the night.
One evening, the man and the woman welcomed visitors to the Big White House.
Soon, a little boy and a little girl began to dance around the tree.
They clapped their hands when the lights flashed on.
They sang the same words that the woman had sung, “Joy to the world, the Lord has come.”
E
hen the children sat down beside the tree, the woman picked up the small brown box again.
She lifted one more figure from the box and placed it in the feeding trough, which she called a manger.
As the Little Green Gecko peered down from his perch on the branch of the tree, he realized the figure in the trough was a baby.
“Most unusual. What can this mean?” questioned the gecko as he edged closer.
As if he had heard the gecko’s question, the man placed a large book onto his lap, opened the pages and began to read the story of the figures in the shelter.
W
e read about a woman named Mary and a man named Joseph who traveled to a city called Bethlehem.
Because there was no place for them to spend the night, they stayed in a shelter for animals on the edge of town.
Mary gave birth to a baby that night and had to use the feeding trough, the manger, for his crib.
As he read on, the man told about shepherds who had a visit from a group of angels on the same night the baby was born.
The shepherds came to visit the baby, and they sang a song about joy coming to the world.
The song sounded familiar to the Little Green Gecko.
H ater, the man told the children, wise men came with gifts for the baby and worshipped Him.
“What an unusual but wonderful story!” concluded the Little Green Gecko.
The Little Green Gecko listened carefully as the man told how this baby named Jesus, the Son of God, loved the people of the world so much that He was willing to give his life to save them.
“Jesus even sees every sparrow that falls,” the man told the children.
“Why, if He can see a sparrow, He can see me too!” reflected the Little Green Gecko, and his heart thumped a little louder.
L
ater that night, as everyone slept, the Little Green Gecko climbed down the tree and crept up to the shelter.
Gazing down upon the infant, the Little Green Gecko remembered all he had heard earlier that evening.
“I wish I could tell this most unusual story to everyone, but what can a gecko do?”
As he looked at the shepherds with their sheep and at the wise men with their gifts, he decided, “I want to give something to the infant King.”
The Little Green Gecko noticed the baby’s skin was exposed to the night air.
“I bet there were mosquitoes in that shelter. If I had been in Bethlehem, I would have eaten every mosquito that was humming around that manger. I would have been glad to do that job.”
The more he wondered about it, the happier he became. “Yes, there is something I can do!”
L
he Little Green Gecko happened to look out the window into the Waioli Tea Gardens and saw a most unusual sight.
There, in the middle of the garden, were the same figures that were under the tree, but they were much larger.
As he looked closer, the Little Green Gecko discovered the large figures were real people and real animals.
But these real figures weren’t standing still.
Instead, the shepherds were scratching their necks and the wise men were slapping their arms, while Mary was trying very hard to keep the pesky mosquitoes away from the baby’s face.
T
he people who came to see the live nativity scene were also batting the air around them.
Some of them were giving up and leaving.
There were just too many buzzing mosquitoes and the mosquitos made it impossible for the people to enjoy the lovely scene they came to see.
“This is awful!” cried the Little Green Gecko.
“I want everyone to be able to hear this most unusual story.”
He scampered down the tree in the Big White House and squeezed through a crack in the window.
T unning from branch to branch and leaf to leaf in the garden, he shouted out in a loud voice to all the other geckos, “Come on, everyone. It’s Christmas Eve and we have a job to do!”
“What’s come over you?”
“We’ve been working hard all along and you never wanted to help us,” they hollered.
“Now, now!” the Little Green Gecko explained, as he told them what he had seen.
“It’s a most unusual story and everyone needs to hear it.”
R
f this most unusual story could make such a change in you, it must be wonderful indeed! replied the Great Green Gecko.
“Let’s help!” they all cried out together, “for after all, it is Christmas Eve.”
As the Little Green Gecko led the way, his gecko friends chirped and sang as they began to work.
Snap! Pop! Zing! flashed their tongues as they darted from leaf to leaf.
Music rang out from the Waioli Tea Garden loudspeakers and the Little Green Gecko chirped and sang along.
“I
s the geckos diligently worked, the large shepherds stopped scratching and the wise men stopped slapping themselves.
Mary softly smiled at the Little Green Gecko as he fiercely attacked any mosquito who dared to fly near the baby.
eople carrying bright candles began to gather in the Waioli Tea Gardens as another man with a big book told the Christmas story.
“Joy to the World,” the people sang.
“Joy to the World,” repeated the Little Green Gecko.
P
hen the people finally left the garden and all was still, the Little Green Gecko slipped back into the Big White House.
“This has certainly been a most unusual night,” he said, as he took his place near the tiny manger under the tree.
When the children awoke on Christmas morning, they saw the Little Green Gecko keeping guard over the baby Jesus.
“Look,” they exclaimed, “It’s our own Christmas Gecko!”
W
nd so it is that if you visit the Waioli Tea Gardens during the week before Christmas, you will see wise men and their gifts, shepherds and their sheep, and Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus.
And if you listen very carefully, you may hear a most unusual sound, the chirping of a Little Green Gecko happily singing, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.”
In the early 1990s, my husband and I lived in the Manoa Valley in a home next door to the Wailoli Tea Gardens. Every year The Salvation Army holds a live nativity in this beautiful garden. I could hear the music and see the Christmas scene from the living room window
Geckos are aplenty in this area of the valley and often visited our home, hiding behind pictures on the wall and resting on top of the mantle clock. It wasn’t too much of a surprise that I found a little green gecko had taken up residence in our Christmas tree. Thus, came the inspiration for this book.
The message of Christmas as seen through the eyes of the Little Green Gecko is a reminder that no matter how small and insignif-icant we may feel, there is always a way to serve God by using the gifts he has given us.
—Doris Noland
Doris Noland is a retired Salvation Army officer, a wife, mother of two and grandmother of five.
