Jesus Was An Amputee
Baby Jesus started off in dreadful shape. Or so I noticed at church this past Christmas, when I discovered the Big Secret of the Little Child. He was an amputee, the Odd’s Bodkins (“God’s Little Body,” in Shakespearean times) with but one arm, needing a miracle to grow it back in time for his public ministry.
Oops; someone, perhaps an altar server, dropped it on the floor. I don’t imagine the pastor was too happy about that.
I happened to notice a cleverly-draped infant being carried up the aisle at Christmas Mass and thought nothing of it. Then I remembered a teenager’s wake in which the boy had lost a hand in a tragic accident and wondered…
Sure enough, when everyone was gone, I peeked. It was worse than peeking through the nun’s habit back in the forties to see if they had ears (was it really a mortal sin?). I pulled up the swaddling clothes, ever careful not to look too closely, and discovered the missing arm. a-HA! It wasn’t Jesus at all, but Captain Hook.
Should I buy a proper Jesus for next Christmas? I was tempted to, being (despite the sentence above) a proper Catholic. But this diocese is closing churches faster than the French Revolution. It’s probably a waste and there won’t be another Christmas here to enjoy the Crèche set. Pity. I like doing little anonymous things that don’t cost a whole lot and this would have been ideal.
Oops; someone, perhaps an altar server, dropped it on the floor. I don’t imagine the pastor was too happy about that.
I happened to notice a cleverly-draped infant being carried up the aisle at Christmas Mass and thought nothing of it. Then I remembered a teenager’s wake in which the boy had lost a hand in a tragic accident and wondered…
Sure enough, when everyone was gone, I peeked. It was worse than peeking through the nun’s habit back in the forties to see if they had ears (was it really a mortal sin?). I pulled up the swaddling clothes, ever careful not to look too closely, and discovered the missing arm. a-HA! It wasn’t Jesus at all, but Captain Hook.
Should I buy a proper Jesus for next Christmas? I was tempted to, being (despite the sentence above) a proper Catholic. But this diocese is closing churches faster than the French Revolution. It’s probably a waste and there won’t be another Christmas here to enjoy the Crèche set. Pity. I like doing little anonymous things that don’t cost a whole lot and this would have been ideal.
posted by Tom Carten at 12:19 AM
2 Comments:
Baby Jesus is alive and well and is in the ceramic intensive care. The poor alter server had several mishaps that night and Baby Jesus was one of the wounded. He'll be good as new next year, same as the alter server-
Hey, there will be plenty of slightly-used Baby Jesus statues hitting the market after His Excellency starts swinging his axe. (Maybe you can pick one up when everyone else is doing the phonathons, trying to convince the people of the soon-to-be-closed parishes to pull some extra cashola out of the air - by, I dunno, selling their medications on the black market or something - to make up for the Peter's Pence deficit.)
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