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| Silent Night? |  |
Everywhere I go, it’s there. Christmas music. And not cool Christmas music like The Trans-Siberian Orchestra, either. No, it’s always some children’s choir made up of orphan-Bambi-eyed mutants who show no gender whatsoever or somebody named Jim-Bob-or Faith-Luanne-or Barbra-Neil-Andy-Williams-Country Joe-Rosenberg wailing about their achy-breaky heart being healed through reindeer games on Christmas Day because of the miracle of Cool Whip. Or something like that. I don’t want Winter Wonderland; I want Seasons of Whither. I don’t want an O Holy Night; I want Hollywood Nights. I don’t want to Let it Snow; I want to Let it Be. But the one song that really makes me want to commit bloody violence against the grocery store speaker system is Silent Night. “Silent Night?” “All is calm?” “Sleep in heavenly peace?” Riiiiiiiiiight. Having had two babies my ownself, (I know; I was there) let me tell you what it was really like. First off, you would have heard Mary and Joseph coming from miles away. Mary would have been harping on Joseph for not making a reservation. “Hello? You knew I was pregnant, didn’t you? I didn’t swallow a balloon that inflated every time I had the hiccups. I told you the Holy Ghost visited me and here we are. No room. Nice planning, pinhead.” Then, a contraction would have hit. Now, if Joseph was like most expectant fathers, he would have said something really helpful like, “Honey, I think you’re having a contraction.” Which would have warranted a spewed reply of unmatched sarcasm and profanity that would have surprised even the Holy Mother herself and would have made her more than a little proud of her command of the Aramaic language. Then, she would have frantically looked around for a stick to bash on Joseph because he would have followed up with an even more inane suggestion, “Honey, remember to breathe.” So, there they are in a barn and let me tell you, it was not calm. Barns, in general, and mangers, specifically, are full of animals. These animals, as a rule, are not potty trained and even if they were, they would have been helpless with toilet paper because it’s really hard to manage even Charmin when all you have are hooves. So, odor, severe odor, was present. Funny how none of the Christmas carols I hear ever mention that. In addition, if Mary was anything like me, severe pain was also present. You want to know how bad contractions are? All other pain is measured against it. I have been in pain since I had my children and every time I am asked, “On a scale of 10 with 10 being labor, how bad is the pain?” Did you get that? Labor is the medical standard for the worst pain ever. Like a lot of people, severe pain makes me vomit so I can imagine Mary was not exactly humming Jingle Bells. Add that smell to the mix. More than likely, Joseph, having seen the first sign of blood, fainted dead away so Mary was there by herself, whapping on Joseph’s limp form with a bale of hay while screaming to the world that the Holy Ghost’s parents were not married. The Magi, who rode in on camels, arrived and you can better believe they did not smell like Calvin Klein. Unless frankincense and myrrh have hallucinogenic properties I am unaware of, Mary probably threw it back at them and demanded morphine. I know I would have. Meanwhile, the shepherds were in their fields. Shepherds were big manly men back then. They could throw a full-grown sheep on each shoulder while balancing a third on their head while fighting off wolves with their feet. These guys were tough yet when they saw the heavenly host in the sky they “were sore afraid.” “Sore afraid” is Bible-talk for scared ….less; well, let’s just say they were probably cleaned out. Every picture I see of Bible people shows them running around without pants but if these shepherds had pants, they probably needed to be changed. So, of course, they, too, go to see Mary and Joseph and you can only imagine what aromas were then added to the scene. However, here’s what I take from that night. There are times when I feel like everything I touch turns to crap. The more I try, the worst things get and it seems like I have to try so hard to just catch up. Nothing is right and I can’t see how to fix it. But on one smelly night, probably the stinkiest night of them all, that was the night the greatest miracle happened. The night when the mighty King came to our world as a helpless baby to prepare the way for us to reconcile with our Father. Merry Christmas.
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