The world of Christian theology has been rocked by a recent discovery, as new information has revealed that a well-known biblical trio went even harder than was previously thought: Religious scholars have concluded that visiting the newborn Jesus was just one stop on the Magi’s wild all-night adoration crawl.
Absolute madmen! So much pious veneration in a single night!
Christian tradition has long held that Jesus Christ was visited after his birth by three reverential wise men from the east, but new findings have led theologians to believe that Christ was just one of no less than 16 stops on a raucous adoration crawl that took the Magi all over the greater Bethlehem area from dusk to dawn. The findings suggest the Magi had originally intended to just quietly adore a fig tree that had miraculously given fruit in a drought and call it a night, until the wise man Caspar suggested they follow up by adoring the immaculately conceived son of God he’d heard about a little ways down the road. The Magi quickly blew through the remaining gold, frankincense, and myrrh they had on them while adoring the Christ child, but it was only upon exiting the manger that Melchior gamely offered that, if they felt like it, he had enough gifts back at his hotel room for them to stay out genuflecting and giving praise the whole night long.
What followed was a marathon exaltation-fest of boisterously paying homage to damn near every object of worship they could find, each stop wilder than the last. At one point, fresh off of adoring a well whose water David once sought from the cave of Adullam, the rowdy Magi picked a fight with another trio of wise men out worshiping over who had better gifts. Caspar and Melchior impishly ran off from the scuffle, only for the normally soft-spoken and timid Balthazar to trounce his three opponents solo and victoriously ride to their next destination on his cheering friends’ shoulders. Records also indicate an instance where Melchior got so out of his mind on pious devotion that he started adoring a completely ordinary donkey he thought a star was pointing him toward while the other two howled with laughter. And while details of this particular fiasco remain hazy, we now know that a disastrous misunderstanding over where the bathroom was got the Magi in so much trouble that their names and faces were permanently added to the “DO NOT LET ADORE” wall at the tomb of the biblical matriarch Rachel.
Damn! Sounds like these hooligans got up to a crazy amount of reverence.
While their stop at the Nativity of Jesus will obviously remain the focus of most contemporary Christian practice, we’d love to see a few artistic depictions of the Magi giddily coaxing a whole room full of fellow religious pilgrims to form a rip-roaring kickline with them at a grungy South Bethlehem dive temple. Considering how interchangeable all the crèches you see around Christmas are, surely someone could switch things up by arranging a tableau in their yard of the Magi excitedly making it rain gifts of gemstones and fine silks so generous that the blessed old guy they were adoring leapt up and started adoring the Magi right back. And failing that, maybe just a simple scene of the three biblical wise men blearily staggering back to their hotel under the morning sun, preparing to sheepishly inform their distant kingdoms that they’d be taking the rest of the day off, and tomorrow too.
Boy, it sounds like visiting the newborn Christ was just the tip of the iceberg for these unstoppable adoration-hounds. Our hats are off to them for kneeling down, paying homage, and generally tearing up the town like no one ever has since!
