Was Jesus A Stoner?
It’s now widely accepted in scholarly circles that a sizable proportion of other gods born to virgins around December 25 used dope. But was the man from Bethlehem of the same dreamy mind?
Eamonn McCann, 08 Dec 2010
Let it be conceded that we cannot at this stage say with certainty that Jesus ever took a toke or nibbled a morsel of cannabis in his life. On the other hand, his life was a re-enactment of the lives of the Roman Attis, the Greek Dionysus, the Egyptian Osiris, the Persian Mithra, to say nothing of the Hittite Kumarbi, the Norse Baldur and the Mayan Gucumatz – all mid-winter virgin-born gods said to have encouraged and joined with devotees in achieving communion with heaven through rituals involving wine and/or sacred plants. (I tend to believe most will have preferred the weed to the wine, gods being intelligent beings who will surely have gone for the healthy option.)
The birth of Jesus was celebrated for centuries on January 6. Nowadays this is taken as the day of the Magi (brilliant name: the Magi), Zoroastrians whose top prophet encouraged a “shamanistic ecstasy” induced by the ingestion of consecrated leaves. The feast is still marked in rural Latvia and parts of Ukraine by the communal consumption of “sweet bread”. Hash cakes, obviously.
So, was Jesus a devil for the dope? I dissent from fanatical pro-dope campaigners who assert this as proven fact. But I think we can safely say that readers who even now are laying in a stash for the season that’s in it are keeping an authentic Xmas tradition alive.
A last-minute present for the peace-loving football fan in your life?
Readers will be aware that Lanarkshire has long been a rich recruiting area for the British Army. So Scottish Second Division side Airdrie FC thought it would be a canny wheeze to publish a special Remembrance Day programme for their match against Livingston on the weekend of the Poppy Madness.
The sepia-toned cover depicted soldiers departing for the front on a train, waving brave farewells to their distressed loved ones gathered on the platform, and the legend below – “Lest we forget!” A common phrase in the context. Except that in this case the troops waving goodbye were not in Scottish regimental uniforms but in the grey garb and distinctive spiked headgear of the German Army, circa 1914...
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