Merry Christmas Part 2 – The birth of Jesus

Of course it seems possible. Everything appears possible to those who already believe.

According to the Gospel of St. Luke, approximately 2,000 years ago Cæsar Augustus commanded that all the world be taxed. In a massive display of dickishness, Cæsar said that in order to pay these taxes and be counted in the census everyone would have to return to their ancestral city. Of course this is absurd. What if someone didn’t know which city was their ancestral city? What if they had great grandparents who were born in different cities, which city would they go to? Exactly how far back does someone go along their ancestral line to determine the correct city? If a husband and wife have different ancestral homes they probably go to the husbands, but what about widows and spinsters? Does the city that counted a young woman when she traveled with her dad get confused when she doesn’t show up the next year because she got married? What about people too old to travel, do they get thrown in jail? Rich people travel with servants. How much trouble does it cause if the servants are forced to go to their master’s tax/census city so they can’t make it to their own? Of even greater concern is the economics of such a venture. If everyone had to take a month off work to go get counted and pay their taxes, that would represent an 8.3% decrease in annual productivity (and therefore tax income). No emperor of Rome was ever that stupid.

Even though this idea is so patently false, we’ll go ahead and indulge it now for the sake of the story. Joseph claimed he was descended from King David so he went to the City of David (Bethlehem). He took along his wife Mary. They’d been married a few months now so Mary was about ready to pop out Sarah’s older brother’s baby (complete with the touch of Holy Spirit). Between the taxes he owed and the huge amount he’d paid to buy Mary from her parents, Joseph just didn’t have enough coin left to pay for a room so he they were spending their nights in a cave outside of town that someone was using to shelter their animals. This worked out pretty well though because when Mary squeezed out Jesus she was able to set him in little manger, chock full of nice clean animal food, to rest between feedings.

That’s right, Jesus had to eat. I don’t know why people don’t ever think about Mary breast feeding. Of course Jesus would suck on her nipples. Seriously people, we don’t want the little guy to starve to death. This is the cool thing about Jesus breast feeding: when Jesus was really little there was a lot of extra magic floating around from his zygotic contact with the “Holy Spirit” so when he was especially content (i.e. breastfeeding) he would glow. He would glow really brightly. In fact, the light was so bright that it attracted all the shepherds working the night shift in the surrounding fields. They came to visit the baby and said, “This baby is clearly wondrous and magical. Surely such a creature is a sign that a time of great peace will shortly be upon us. Praise be to the Lord for allowing us to see such a miraculous thing.”

Then, many years later Christians started celebrating Jesus’ birth during the Winter solstice (probably around the year 354), which is a shame. Jesus was clearly not born in the winter near Jerusalem. Those months are much too wet for shepherds to be out in the hills with their flocks. It’s also pretty lame that the Romans celebrated the solstice on December 25^th instead of the 21^st. Oh well. At least the Germans were good enough to lend Sinterklaas to the Americans in the 19^th century so they could come up with Santa Claus. Yay for Santa!

Merry Christmas Folks. Seriously.

Ref: Luke 2:1-17

Ruth – Biblical Hottie - Part 2

Still a sucker for a good country-western romance

So Boaz calls out to Ruth saying, “Heya sexy, don’t go gleaning on no other fields, ya hear? You watch my workers do their havestin’ then you follow after so you can get some good gleaning done! Don’t go worryin’ neither. I done told my boys to not go botherin’ ya. Also, ya should prolly just work with my handmaids from now on.”

After Boaz had his little chat with Ruth he told his workers to make sure they left a few handfuls of grain between the rows so Ruth could glean them. When Ruth got home that night with all that grain Naomi knew something was up and asked Ruth where she’d been working. When Naomi learned Ruth had been gleaning Boaz’s fields she got super excited and said, “Praise the Lord! That man is a really close relation. You make sure you never glean nowhere else, ya hear?”

After a couple of months, Naomi called Ruth in and told her, “Now listen girl, I done heard that Boaz is gonna be workin’ hard all day today in the barn so he’s gonna fall asleep in there. You go in after he’s asleep, uncover his feet and lay down on them.” So Ruth does this, and when Boaz wakes up he sees her laying on his feet and asks, “Um, who are you?” Ruth answered, “I’m Ruth, your handmaid. Please marry me because I’m also your relative.” Boaz said that would be alright (besides, he'd been hot for cousin-in-law since the tractor/song incident), but there was someone in the city that was more closely related, so he would have to make sure this other guy didn’t want to marry Ruth. Then he gave her six measures of barley and sent her on home.

That same day Boaz went out and found the closer relative and grabbed 10 elders of the city for a little sit-down. He told the relative that Naomi was back in town and she needed to sell her dead husband’s land. At first the relative was interested but then Boaz explained that Ruth would have to be part of the deal. Mr. Relative freaked out just a little and said, “Hey, no way man! I’m not buyin’ her. She’s used material. I’ve never even had sex and I want my first time to be with a virgin!”

So Boaz stood up and made a little speech: “Hey y’all. Pay attention! Today I’m buying all of Elimelech’s old stuff, and all his son’s old stuff. This includes Ruth. I’m buying her too so I can marry her.” So Ruth and Boaz got married and in short order Ruth had a son and turned him over to Naomi to care for. The neighbor women were super excited to see Naomi raising a baby and they named him Obed. Obed later turned out to be King David’s grandfather.

And they all lived happily ever after. You know, like you do if you buy your dead cousin's widow and make babies with her who are then brought up by your dead cousin’s mother.

Ref: Ruth 2-4

Ruth – Biblical Hottie - Part 1

I’m a sucker for a good country-western romance

Once upon a time Naomi moved to Moab with her husband Elimelech and their sons because there wasn’t enough to eat in their home town of Bethlehem. Elimelech died and the sons got married while living in Moab so Naomi picked up two daughter-in-laws: Orpah (not Oprah) and Ruth. Well, apparently Moab sucks because Naomi’s sons died too (probably West Nile or Hantavirus). Then Naomi called in her daughter-in-laws and said, “I done heard that God had the grace to bless the folks in Bethlehem with bread again, so I’m headin’ back thata way. Y’all need to get back to yer mama’s houses. I can’t go takin’ care of y’all anymore.”

Orpha was a good little girl and headed back to live with her parents, but Ruth said, “I won’t be havin’ none of that. I’m goin’ with you.” Naomi thought that was crazy and said, “What? You be crazy girl? I ain’t gonna have no more sons for you to marry, and even if I did, you really gonna wait around ‘till they’re old nuff for ya?” Ruth said she didn’t care about that. She was going with Naomi no matter what. Naomi relented and they moved to Bethlehem together.

Now, back in the olden days poor people could go to a field after it had been harvested and try to find any grain that the workers had missed (this is called gleaning). As luck would have it, Ruth unintentionally ended up gleaning the fields of some guy named Boaz. This is significant because Boaz was a relative of her deceased father-in-law.

Boaz was out driving his tractor along the corn rows that day and saw Ruth working in the field wearing her daisy dukes and a red flannel shirt. The Lyrics from John Michael Mongomery’s hit “Sold” (The Grundy County Auction Incident) slammed into his head like a ton of hay and he knew that he had “never seen anyone lookin’ so fine. Man I gotta have her, she’s a one of a kind. I’m goin’ once, goin’ twice. I’m sold! on the lady in the second row. She’s an eight, she’s a nine, she’s a ten, I know. She’s got ruby red lips, blonde hair, blue eyes. An I’m about to bid my heart good-bye!”

To be continued in Part 2 of this exciting epic . . .

Ref: Ruth 1 and Ruth 2:1-3