By Bartholomew Kettering, Seasonal Decorations Correspondent

LARKSPUR BEND — Every year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the men of Cedar Gap Community Church carry the wooden stable, the plywood sheep and the three hand-painted Wise Men out to the front lawn. And every year, the last thing they carry out is the cord.

It is orange. It is 150 feet long. It runs from an outlet behind the parsonage bathroom sink, out the bathroom window, across the side yard, under the church sign and up to a single floodlight aimed at the manger. It has done this every December since 1988.

"There is no other outlet," said trustee Merle Ashcombe, 77, who has been in charge of the cord since 1991. "People ask about that. I tell them the building was wired by a man who did not expect Christmas to come every year."

The cord is held together in two places with black electrical tape. One patch dates to 1994, when a lawn mower found it in April. The other dates to 2003, and nobody remembers why, though Ashcombe has theories involving a youth group snowball fight. Both patches are marked with small strips of masking tape that read "OK" in his handwriting.

The arrangement depends on the bathroom window staying open exactly two inches from late November until the week after New Year's. Any wider and the parsonage gets cold. Any narrower and the window pinches the cord and the manger goes dark. Over the years, three pastors and their families have lived in the parsonage, and each has been handed a laminated card on moving day that reads, in full: "Do not shut the bathroom window in December. Love, the Trustees."

Pastor Dale Whitcombe, who moved in four years ago, said the family has adapted. "We wear sweaters to brush our teeth," he said. "My kids think that's just what Advent is."

The church has tried to fix it. In 2009, the building committee voted to install an outdoor outlet and got a quote from an electrician, which was tabled when it turned out to cost more than the stable. In 2016, a member donated a solar-powered spotlight, which worked beautifully every afternoon and shut off at 5:15, roughly the moment anyone drove by. In 2022, the church bought a brand-new green cord, which Ashcombe stored in its original packaging "for emergencies" and has not opened.

"The new one is too short," he said. "By about 20 feet. Nobody measured. That's how you know it was a committee purchase."

Each year, the cord also gets a ceremonial inspection. Ashcombe lays it out in the fellowship hall on the Wednesday before setup, walks its full length in his socks and announces "it'll go another year." The women's circle serves pie during the inspection, and attendance has grown to about 30, which is higher than some Wednesday Bible studies.

The building committee has added an outdoor outlet to its long-range plan for the fifth time, between "fix the steeple flashing" and "find out who owns the bus."

At press time, Ashcombe had walked the cord in his socks, found a soft spot near the 90-foot mark and declared it "character."