The Nativity

When you think the matter through, a stable was actually a very dangerous place for the Virgin Mary to give birth in. As for laying Baby Jesus in a manger, that was bordering on the irresponsible. How so?

A manger is basically a cow-feed receptacle, and cows aren’t particularly “with it” when it comes to intelligence, hence the term “bovine stupidity.” It would therefore have been just like a dumb cow to mistake the manger’s divine contents for some sort of high-protein, animal-based grass replacement, along the lines of that mulched up sheep carcass that gives everyone BSE. As a result, our Lord and Saviour could easily have got himself eaten by accident.

If this had happened, Joseph and Mary would probably have used their combined ingenuity to try to get Baby Jesus out of the cow, resulting in a very different Nativity scene to the traditional one. The shepherds and the magi would now have been confronted by the sight of Mary forcing some sort of plunger down the cow’s mouth, while, from the other end, Joseph stuck his hand up the cow’s arse and groped around inside, James Herriot style.

The success of this extraction operation would have depended on exactly how far into the cow’s digestive system the Light of the World had travelled. If He’d only been eaten an hour or so previously, then it might have been just possible to get the cow to puke Him up using some sort of emetic. On the other hand, had several hours elapsed, then Jesus would by now have been inside one of the cow’s many stomachs, gradually being converted into milk and, ultimately, cow shit.

Whatever, it’s hardly the sort of stuff to inspire many Christmas carols or cards. And in a worst-case scenario, the whole basis of Christian civilization might now centre around the worship of a divine cow-pat. Consequently, the term “Holy Shit” would no longer just be one of Batman’s expletives, but an infallible article of Faith, expressed ex cathedra by the Pope himself.