8408/21327 = 0.3942136359373535
My show off son was doing this year's Christmas play. He pulled faces, played his lines for all the laughs he could get and bowed saying "thank you" even when he hadn't been in the scene or hadn't bothered to sing.
He's nothing like me. I think Peter Kay might be his real dad. At least this gives him a chance of being funny.
The play mixed modern day children being given a jigsaw by a mysterious market trader with the story of the Nativity. Just when I thought there wasn't a new take on this thing.
I have thought about the Nativity quite a lot and why the star that the Magi followed didn't make it into any other history books except the New Testament. Ditto the call for everyone to go back to the home of their ancestors. As you'll know if you've seen Christ on a Bike or read the start of the New Testament, Joseph was a good number of generations from David. He was his grandad with at least a dozen greats in front. If he had to go back to the town of someone from many centuries before, then why that particular great great great etc grandad and how many people knew their heritage that far.
Also there's no mention in any other history books of Herod killing the first born baby in every family - which you really think would have been noted somewhere. If you can't senselessly murder hundreds of children without more than one book writing about it, then you'd have to feel it was a wasted effort. Thank goodness the Christians made a note of it or it would have been bad news for Herod.
The question that hit me for the first time during this play was why did the three kings (they weren't kings and the Bible doesn't say how many of them there were) bother to go and visit Herod. They were following a helpful star that had brought them all the way from the East and which would eventually settle right over the stable where Jesus was born (that's pretty specific work from the star there - it wasn't just in the sky above a certain country or continent - it led people to a fucking outhouse. How come the Magi, having got this far by following the star, suddenly decided to disregard it and just go to the nearest palace. Suddenly they decided they could find the new king on their own? Unless the star hovered over the Palace for a bit of a prank.
If so it was a sick prank, because the Magi visiting Herod is what led to all those children who were clearly never slaughtered, to be slaughtered (according to some sources). The Magi were wise men but still didn't work out that Herod was playing them and pretending to want to know who the new king was. They would have come back and told him if they hadn't been told to give him a swerve via a dream (shared by all of them? Who knows?) Couldn't they have been told not to visit Herod in the first place via dream and reminded just to follow the star, thus saving the lives of all those children who were never killed (and would be dead by now anyway if they had been killed)?
It seems like a real admin fuck up to me. And the Magi seem the lease wise people that I've ever seen. Especially the one who brought myrrh as a present for a baby. What a dick!
Someone should write a nativity play from the perspective of the idiotic, self-described Wise man. And I am the man to do it. Will be hawking it to primary schools December 2026 (can you believe next year marks a decade since Brexit?) The Three Stupid Wise Men Who Followed a Star for Ages, Then Stopped Following It For a Bit and Then Followed it Again And Brought Mainly Shit Presents.
