Holy Foreskin, Batman!

See if you can guess what the following refer to:

Octave of the Nativity
The Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
Feast of the Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ
The Name of Jesus

I’ll give you a hint. They are the names assigned to a certain holiday by the Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran Churches. Give up? It’s New Year’s Day. You might have guessed from the first one which means “the eighth day after Christmas”, though it’s actually the seventh day after Christmas. Raise your hand if you even knew New Year’s Day was a religious holiday. To Catholics it’s a Holy Day of Obligation, meaning if you skip Mass it’s a mortal sin. Mortal sins are the only ones that matter. Die with a mortal sin on your rap sheet and bam! Straight to Hell for eternity. No court of appeals. Venial sins are bush league but not so insignificant that the all-just, all-merciful, all-loving God won’t burn your ass in Purgatory for them.

Next question. What event in the life of Jesus is commemorated by this day? I’ll give you a hint:

I’m told it doesn’t hurt. Much. Or for long. I’m told a lot of things.

When I was a wee bairn the Catholic Church called it the Feast of the Circumcision. That’s how it’s done! Straight from the shoulder, no pussyfooting around. Got questions, ask your parents. We were made of sterner stuff back then. I had to wear a tie and jacket to school. Every day if you can believe the barbarity.

So, final question, which has plagued me ever since I first thought of it five minutes ago. Why do the very folks who badger us every year to put the Christ back into Xmas, want so much to take the foreskin out of New Year’s Day? Why all this mealy mouthing about Names and Solemnity and Mary? Why, one Pope, Paul VI, went so far as to declare it a “World Day of Peace”, but all he got was Miss Congeniality. Look, we’re all adults here. This is the 21st century, we’ve been around the block, we know the score. Let’s look this foreskin in the eye. If we’re going to put the Christ back into Christmas, shouldn’t we also put the foreskin back into New Year’s Day?

It won’t be easy. I quote from a website I randomly selected because it said what I wanted:

Consequently the Circumcision fell on the first of January. In the ages of paganism, however, the solemnization of the feast was almost impossible, on account of the orgies connected with the Saturnalian festivities, which were celebrated at the same time. Even in our own day the secular features of the opening of the New Year interfere with the religious observance of the Circumcision, and tend to make a mere holiday of that which should have the sacred character of a Holy Day.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. In fact, I didn’t. Saturnalian festivities, secular features obscuring the sacred character, that’s what I’m talking about. Parties, dropping the ball in Times Square, drunken smooching, staggering home, all day football with chips. Not a word about the Holy Prepuce (pr. Pray-pyoos). Christmas has all that lore, the inn, the stable, the Three Wise Men, while New Year’s Day, some years, doesn’t even have Notre Dame in a bowl game.

So, as a public service, here’s some of the back story of Jesus’s Bris, the legend, the events we can write future circumcision carols about.

First of all, why did Jesus even have a Bris? This may surprise and disorient some folks but turns out Jesus was not Himself a Christian! No! And it gets even worse. He was a Jew! Yes! And ever since Abraham Jews have been circumcised. We don’t hear much about Abraham’s circumcision, it being overshadowed by the Lord’s command to off his son, but God also ordered him to whack his weenie. Actually, however, it was all a misunderstanding. It seems Abraham misinterpreted the phrase “to whack off”. It’s true! And you heard it here first. God godsplained it to me last night in a dream. Here’s a pic of an angel trying to set Abraham straight:

Circumcision became quite the thing for Jews. David, before he became a famous statue, once massacred 500 Philistines (not that it did much good as there always more Philistines), and gifted his future father-in-law with their foreskins. That was King Solomon’s price for his daughter’s hand. Odd dude, Solomon.

Personally, I never bought the whole bride price story. I think it was a white elephant thing.

Like His birth, Jesus’s bris was a humble affair. It was in a cave early in the morning. A little old Hebrew woman scooped up the foreskin and preserved it in an alabaster box in some oil of spikenard, the very same spikenard used in stingo beer, whatever that is. Odd that legend is so precise about the box and the oil yet omits the lady’s name. I like to think of her as Mrs Goldstein. Now, Mrs. Goldstein had a nephew Shlomo who was a druggist. He could have been a doctor but he was only half Jewish.

“Take heed,” she told him. “Sell not this alabaster box of spikenard-ointment, although thou shouldst be offered three hundred pence for it.”

Three bucks? The very idea! Get that thing appraised on “Antiques Roadshow” and you’d break the bank. At auction, on a good day, minimum gazillion bucks. But did Shlomo heed the advice of his shrewd Aunt Goldy? In a way. He got 400 pence for it from a wealthy Roman pervert named Biggus Dickus. Yes, that Biggus Dickus. And one shudders to think what he did with it.

What we do know is that the alabaster box found its way to Mary the Sinner who “poured forth the ointment out of it upon the head and feet of Our Lord Jesus Christ and wiped it off with the hairs of her head”. Good old Mary the Sinner, always a bit kinky. The box next turned up on Christmas Day, 800 when Charlemagne gave it to Pope Leo III, claiming it had been brought to him by an angel as he prayed at the Holy Sepulchre. And who’s going to tell Charlemagne he’s full of beans? The Pope consigned it to the Sanctum Sanctorum in the Lateran Basilica in Rome with other gross stuff he didn’t want to touch. We know for a fact this is the same alabaster box, though now minus the spikenard, thanks to Mary the Sinner, because of a vision of St Bridget of Sweden.

St Bridget, or Birgitta, had her first vision at age 10. She saw Jesus on the cross. Now, I’m no expert on visions, nor do I know the circumstances of Bridget’s. Was she just walking down the street, or peeling potatoes, or dozing? I have no idea. But, however they work, Bridget had a slew of them and she wrote books about them, many of which were best sellers. Her greatest hits were of the Nativity, and her descriptions of what she saw influence creche scenes to this day, though her declaration that Mary was a blond (recall that Bridget was a Swede) hasn’t caught on. She also minored in visions of Purgatory. So one day, in between Nativity and Purgatory visions, Bridget “received bits” of the Holy Foreskin “on her tongue” (of all places!) from an angel (oh, those angels!) and “it tasted sweet, surpassing all other sweetness”. Well, it would, wouldn’t it? In fact, “so great was the sweetness at the swallowing of this membrane that she felt a sweet transformation in all her members and the muscles of her members”. Indeed.

Now, in some mystical fashion I have been unable to discover despite intense research lasting several minutes, the Church decreed that this member shaking “transformation” of Bridget’s confirmed that the foreskin in the Sanctum Sanctorum was the One True Holy Prepuce, as opposed to all the others. Here’s St Bridget looking babalicious:

I mentioned other foreskins, other contenders in the relic trade. Over a dozen in fact, spread across Europe. There were other visions as well. St Catherine of Siena had a doozy. Catherine was one of the first two female Doctors of the Church. That’s like getting elected to the Hall of Fame. She had “invisible” stigmata and was known as a “holy anorexic”. She starved herself to death. How saintly is that? In her vision she married Jesus and instead of a wedding ring He gave her His foreskin. She says He cut it off Himself. Which seems somewhat contrary to the whole Jesus being circumcised as a baby idea. But, hey, we’re talking miracles here so all bets are off. When anyone would say they couldn’t see the foreskin on her finger she had the perfect reply: it was invisible. Here’s a pic of the wedding ceremony:

When Catherine died the folks in Siena wanted to keep her body but Rome was all ixnay on that idea. They wanted it. So the Sienese settled for just a bit. They cut off her head and stuffed it in a bag. But, sad to say, they were caught by some Roman guards so what could they do but pray to Catherine to save their butts somehow. And lo, when the bag was opened it was full of rose petals! How sweet. Here’s Catherine’s head looking not so babalicious:

For my money, though, the tastiest vision prize should go to Agnes Blannbekin, a 13th century Austrian nun. Check this out:

Crying and with compassion, she began to think about the foreskin of Christ, where it may be located [after the Resurrection]. And behold, soon she felt with the greatest sweetness on her tongue a little piece of skin alike the skin in an egg, which she swallowed. After she had swallowed it, she again felt the little skin on her tongue with sweetness as before, and again she swallowed it. And this happened to her about a hundred times. And when she felt it so frequently, she was tempted to touch it with her finger. And when she wanted to do so, that little skin went down her throat on its own. And it was told to her that the foreskin was resurrected with the Lord on the day of resurrection. And so great was the sweetness of tasting that little skin that she felt in all [her] limbs and parts of the limbs a sweet transformation.

Wow, these women and their transformations! Porn used to be more subtle. Alas, all this throat action was too much for the Church to swallow and her “works” were censored. Here’s a tasteful picture of Agnes in action:

There is no record of any male saints having transformations involving the Holy Prepuce. In fact, the only reference I could find involving the male of the species was the 17th century theologian Leo Allatius who wrote an op-ed called “Discussion Concerning the Prepuce of Our Lord Jesus Christ” in which he figured these females were all full of baloney since the foreskin was too special to remain on Earth and therefore ascended into Heaven when Jesus did and now, naturally, is one of the rings of Saturn. Well, really. What else would you do with it?

Fun factoid: bits of the revered personage are called relics of the First Class. Not sure what Second Class relics might be or if there are Third, Fourth, etc. Hair, nails, milk teeth, and even urine and feces! Check this out if you don’t believe me:

My favorite, though, is the Holy Umbilicus. Seems Mary kept it – of course. Who doesn’t? She gave it to St John, though I don’t know which one, who in turn gave it to the Bishop of Ephesus who was a collector and before you could say Saint Jack Robinson there were Holy Bellybuttons strewn across Europe. And am I the only one who wishes the Pope would finally issue a bull (and isn’t that quite the word for Papal rulings?) on whether it’s an innie or an outie? At last count, meaning when I just looked it up on the internet, there were fourteen divine umbilical cords! Hey, o ye of little faith, if it can be done with loaves and fishes, why not bellybuttons?

Speaking of the loaves and fishes, there are leftovers scattered here and there. Of course, they have miraculous powers, just the thing for constipation. Also good for what ails you is the Holy Breast Milk found in several locations in France. Especially tasty in a hazelnut espresso. Of course, you can just have it straight like this guy in a Christian themed coffee shop just outside the Vatican:

In fact, there were so many Holy Umbilici it got so they had to have specially trained physicians selected by the local priest to be verifiers. First, they would make a visual inspection of the shriveled leather under neutral lighting. Next, they would sniff it to test its orthonasal body. Then comes the tasting, both on the tongue and through retronasal olfaction at the back of the throat. Finally, they would ponder it and decide if it was indeed a human foreskin. These experts were called croque-prepuces. Make up your own joke.

Of course, the only one the Church cares about is the one confirmed by St. Bridget’s vision which was stolen from the Sanctum Sanctorum during the Sack of Rome in 1527. Germans, wouldn’t you know? The thief got nabbed, however, in Calcata, Italy and did those folks make the most of it. First, they had a slew of miracles, like freak storms and perfumed fogs. That was good business so the Church approved their foreskin’s authenticity with a ten year indulgence to pilgrims. For you non-Catholics, that means ten years off your sentence in Purgatory.

And that naturally reminds me of Ejaculations. When I was a nominal Catholic there were, in the back of the Sunday Missal, several pages of Ejaculations. Please note the capital ‘E’. The pages were not stuck together. These were short phrases one ejaculated (verbally), like “Christ have mercy on my soul!”, or “Lamb of God, taketh away the sins of the world!”, or “Holy moly, look at the rack on that lady!” You could make up your own. Next to each one was how many days off you got in Purgatory and you could apply these credits to accounts other than your own. You could, for example, ejaculate and then think, “that one was for dear old Uncle Buddy”, who always wanted you to sit in his lap. Of course, dear old Uncle Buddy was probably in Hell, not Purgatory, in which case it was unclear whose account was credited. One would assume one’s own. Imagine the millions upon millions of ejaculations squirting Heavenward there to be properly entered into the Great Database of Ejaculations:

Those were the days my friend. Now things have changed. No more indulgence, no more Ejaculations. What a world, what a world.

But where was I? Oh yes, Calcata. Besides the pilgrimages of nuns, monks, assorted riff-raff, the town also trotted it out for an annual parade. Kind of a Tournament of Roses only with a foreskin. Gradually, however, the Church came more and more to regard the whole prepuce thing as unseemly and the object itself an “irreverent curiosity” and in 1900 a Papal decree threatened to excommunicate anyone who wrote or so much as spoke about the miraculous membrane. Which did not stop the good citizens of Calcata who continued their annual bash. Until 1983, when it was again stolen, this time from a local priest who was keeping it in a tightly secured location in a shoebox in his closet. Or so says the priest, one Fr Dario who, by the way, afterwards said, “I never believed in the relic. I just pretended to. The same goes for my predecessors”. Make of that what you will. The townspeople tend to suspect the Holy See itself, that they either stole it or, more likely, bought it, from Fr Dario. Seems the Church nowadays finds it embarrassing and would like for the whole thing never to have happened.

Me, I think the thief was Guido Sarducci. You just know he has it in an alabaster jar of spikenard somewhere and he’s sitting next to it swigging stingo beer and gloating. But does it really matter? We don’t put the Christ back into Christmas because we have His cradle. It’s because He was born. So we shouldn’t put the foreskin back into New Year’s Day because we have His prepuce. We should do it because I said so.