Merry Non-Descript Religious Festival

I did promise a horoscope in this post, but I’ll leave it until later. There are more pressing matters at hand, namely, Christmas.

Enough people hate Christmas that I would be doing no one a favour by adding my own cynical and probably hastily concocted rant to the orgy of writing that has already been done on the subject. It would be hard to parallel the spleen-venting exhibited by Will Self in “Grumpy Old Men”, with words along the lines of: stuffing yourself to the point of death, toppling over while emitting a burst of flatulence and lying there with your slippered feet twitching in the fetid air. So let’s take a different tack, as a homesick sailor with a minor cannonball wound in his right side might say.

We all know the story of Christmas and the nativity, or we think we do. But in a triumph of investigative journalism, I have uncovered a more accurate version of events. Caution: This is heavily blasphemous, and is intended in jest. Religious folk of sensitive sensibilities press "Back" now.

The Story of the Nativity
As recounted by Jesus Christ, Superstar, to Martin Bashar, with their heads tipped at a slightly doleful 45 degree angle:

Some time ago, there was a woman called Mary, who took pride in the trimming of her privet hedge, loyally devoting her time between chores and trips to the Nazareth branch of Homebase to the leading of a fulfilling and pious life, austere but faithful, moral and humble. One time she had scarcely unloaded the shopping onto the kitchen floor, when out of the corner of her eye, that tell-tale red light from the answer machine caught her hypnotically. Her first ever message. She had often looked at the machine in the past, puzzled, musing on how great it would be if someone would invent the telephone so that the answer machine could finally have a use. But here, paradoxically, that red glinting light betrayed that some great event had unfolded.

Gingerly, she tiptoed over the strewn shopping bags and pressed the dust-covered button of the machine. It was the Angel Gabriel, and he told unto her that she would give birth to a beautiful bouncing baby that was the son of the Holy Bearded One, without having ever bumped uglies, and to fear not, for Joseph her husband would also be informed, so that he would not have to send an inept Relationship Detective stalking after her, culminating in the usual guilty verdict and the inevitable dispatching of a sniper in her direction as was fashionable at the time. Mary was much shocked by the news, as it would mean having to give up smoking, but she conceded that perhaps an event of this scale was more important than fulfilling the daily nicotine high. In any case, a shepherd wandering about the hills had discovered a substance secreted by sheep on their point of climax that turned out to be a suitable substitute for nicotine. It’s lonely in them hills.

At this point, the Israeli government, which presided over Nazareth and other nearby towns in its ‘territory’, ordered that families return to the town of the bread-winners birth to pay taxes to that most ordered and merciful government which had looked after their interests with such gusto and with only a minimum of artillery fire. In one of those anomalies caused by intense bureaucracy and bloody-mindedness, the town of Nazareth was under curfew, with soldiers shooting people indulging in the wicked activity of transport. Thus people had to make their way under cover of stealth to their birth-towns to pay their taxes to said government and avoid the ritual punishment of dunking for being in arrears. The journey was only 70 miles, but as their donkey did not have an Israeli number plate, they were stopped at several checkpoints, where they had to plead and perform small dances. To make matters worse, they were further delayed when their donkey broke an axle, and they had to be taken onward by a friendly passing taxi driver – “I wouldn’t normally, but as you’re pregnant and, well, it is Christmas…”

When they got to the outskirts of Bethlehem, Joseph’s place of birth, they found a group of power-hungry soldiers who were barely out of their cots jeering and poking their gun barrels at the hapless taxi driver, refusing to let them through. An argument ensued in which shots were fired, but luckily there were only superficial injuries. In time, and after serious bribery, they were allowed on their way, by which point Mary was heavily in labour. They arrived in Bethlehem to the sound of heavy shelling. The IDF was midway through an operation to clear the area of militants, later declaring the mission successful after they announced the killing of the ring-leader, a four year-old girl, and her second-in-command, a blind orphan. Every hotel that the taxi went to was full of journalists from BBC News 24, Sky and Al Jazeera, and so in desperation they retired to a barn after evicting the poultry which provided target practice for the assembled soldiers.

The virgin birth, like many events supposedly ordained from the heavens - such as the horrific earthquake in 18th century Lisbon, tsunamis that drown hundreds of thousands and cataclysmic volcanic eruptions in Indonesia that cause global weather effects that persist for years - was not entirely palatable in the aesthetic sense. Now, audiences at this time had not yet been inured to scenes of graphic gore by such events as the Alien Trilogy, The Seven Years War or various Japanese gameshows as over-dubbed by a mirthful and slightly-too-nonchalant Chris Tarrant, so the outright horror provoked shock in the assembled. Accordingly, one of the onlookers exclaimed, “Jesus Christ!” as the vast tangle of limbs, cords and fluids that, like most child-births, could well have been coloured by a painter vomiting onto an easel. That name stuck for the baby, and many historians have recounted how it was fortunate how the exclamation was not, “Gordon Bennett!”, or “Janet Street-Fucking-Porter!”. Indeed, it would have brought the vast majority of Sunday school goers to tears that no amount of scones could subdue.

Meanwhile, three wise men decided to follow an especially bright star in the sky that was said to lead to Bethlehem and the virgin birth. As most people know, many stars rise and set like the sun, and this star was no exception. Every night it would rise in the east, travel slowly in a grand arc to the west, while the hapless wise men followed its course on land in a large curve westwards. As the star set, they would resolve to carry on following the next night, after catching up on much needed sleep during the day. The next morning, they would head back east to where the star was rising and start again. The first wise man died of starvation after lying crippled for four days after a particularly vicious happy-slapping, and the second was eaten by a puma around day ten. The third wise man, Caspar, who later took on a Hollywood role portraying a friendly ghost that did not scare children into shitting themselves, took up the gifts of the other two, and wisely decided around day fifteen to use his SatNav instead, reaching Bethlehem by the evening.

The baby was presented with the three great gifts which, apart from the gold, make little sense in today’s materialistic, crass and immoral word devoid of religion and filled only with cynical half-wits like myself. So it came to pass that a lowly barn-baby made his name famous, for his charming chivalry, selflessness, good humour and links with the music industry.

A Short Piece of the Interview Transcript:
As recovered from a bin in Wood Lane by a tramp trying to retrieve a piece of falafel, still moist to the touch but with spicy malingerings reminiscent of his own spell as a Foreign Correspondent in the Middle East:

Bashar: What were your first thoughts as you emerged into that barn?
JC, Superstar: I did wonder how someone as supposedly important as myself could have ended up being born in such a place. Even under a pool table would have been more dignified. A quick look in the Yellow Pages after all the crowds had gone revealed plenty of more luxury places, such as the Hilton on Al Quds Street, and the tastefully redecorated Nativity Hostel only 200 yards from the barn. It was the gifts I was more disgusted with, in truth, the gold and frankincense weren’t even chewable. And the model of the Mir space station was downright unrealistic, it never had solar refractors that shape.
Bashar: When did you first suspect that you were the son of God?
Superstar: My religious education class at primary school was the first inkling. I saw a stylised picture of myself being born in that barn. That, and the incident when I turned our Special Needs teacher into a toad.
Bashar: That business with the loaves and fishes, it was reported widely on Sky News at the time, how much of that was fabrication?
Superstar: It was a little exaggerated by the press, but they had this sale of bread on in Lidl’s, plus I had some leftover fish in the freezer from that fishing trip with Moses in the Autumn. I long to do some proper fishing though. I do feel his method of splitting the lake down the middle causing the fish to instantaneously drop dead onto the lake-bed took some of the joy out of it.
Bashar: You realise what you just said is not historically accurate?
Superstar: How can you call someone the son of God and then deprive him of the ability to practice Time Travel?
Bashar: Fair enough. What would you say were the most challenging aspects of your position in society?
Superstar: The paparazzi are a constant headache. Not one bloody issue of Heat seems to go by without a picture of me picking up some milk from Costcutter, and some slanderous, venomous caption about my alleged tight-fistedness. Being descended from a deity doesn’t mean you can’t be thrifty.
Bashar: Fair point, can I have your autograph?
At this point, two laser beams shoot from Superstar’s eyes and through Marty’s hand, causing it to melt as his clipboard, now revealed to be hosting an obscene doodle, clatters to the ground. The interviewer collapses onto the floor writhing in agony. The interview is brought to a quick close as the Health & Safety Executive are called in to mull over the accuracy of the ‘Interviewing JC Risk Register’ that had been submitted prior to filming.

An un-edited version of this interview will be shown on Bravo in the Spring. JC’s new book, My Father’s Stepladder – Prying Insights Into What Makes God Tick, will be available from all good bookshops on January 14th. He can also be seen presenting Have I Got News For You on February 7th.

Merry Christmas.