"What, no rabbit? Gimme that hat!"

Clear, starting a little cooler, then a lot cooler as night fell.

What exactly was the Gift of the Magi for which I titled yesterday's post? It has been suggested (I think on some PBS thing I watched maybe last year) that these guys managed to give Christianity's First Family useful items for the first Christmas Day. They would have needed gold for money to finance a future trip to North Africa. The nasty stable air might have given the baby Jesus some breathing problems, so they brought him some incense known for its medicinal effects. And speaking of medicine, myrrh came in two forms: one as an unguent (or something like that) to use as a topical antiseptic, and one as a liquid for use in the bath. Women used liquid myrrh to heal following childbirth in the ancient world. (This is more of my scant research on the topic.) They were considered gifts fit for a king, because kings always want the best stuff around.

But that's not the gift of the Magi for us now. Their story reaches out two millennia to us for another reason, I think. The few details about their journey and adoration experience are telling details, if we take the time to stitch them together. The story becomes a little course of its own in nonlinear thinking. You have to examine your own mistaken preconceptions about the magi themselves, correct the information with linear research, then start connecting some of the dots missing, but left carefully implied, in the narrative. It also helps to develop an intellectual sensitivity (or "instinct") for context, and how to apply that instinct to the facts at hand.

Modern-day magi probably don't interpret dreams, at least not professionally. But think of CSI on TV -- isn't what I described similar to what they do to solve a crime? Does this kind of thing go on in real life? It may very well, though on a certainly less melodramatic level.

By the way, CSI (the second season, I think) is also where I learned something else about magic -- the true definition of the word "abbacadabra." It's the words supposedly in Aramaic (I think) for "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" with the final "a" in the first two words and initial "a" in the third combining them into one "magic" word.


LJ orig.: 12/20/06