Christianity and Roman Catholicism in a Nutshell Part II-So anyway, nine months later God had his specially manufactured kid pop out of virgin #2 in a stinking barn, with a bunch of farm animals and Joe the Carpenter for midwives. Suddenly, three wiseguys showed up from the east side and gave the kid some gold and two kinds of psychedelic tree sap. Those things don't come cheap but are hard for a little baby to use. (That's Christmas for you—giving people expensive stuff they don't need.) But because the three wiseguys from the east side did that 20 centuries ago, YOU now have to pay an annual fine in person at a huge cavernous building called a church, which is a type of echo chamber. But that isn't enough. You also have to put a dry dead tree in water with live electrical wires inside your house and plug it in; and you have to swear to your kids some bearded guy with eight deer that can fly will somehow squeeze down your chimney even though he's a big fat slob and you don't have a chimney, and leave behind a bunch of junk from China that will be broken or thrown away before noon on December 25th, even though the special baby was born in April. Got that?
 
The baby (named Jesus Christ after what Joe the Carpenter would sometimes yell when banging his thumb with a hammer) was raised Jewish yet became a super laid-back, peace & love, hippie philosopher-poet and a decent carpenter like his mom's husband, who wasn't his dad; the pigeon was, remember? Anyway, as part of God's twisted deal with the goat-guy, whacking this kid would somehow get everybody on Earth off scot-free. (We know a few people who could use that, right, Vinny? Hey, whaddyou laughing at, Joey—I'm looking at you too, wiseguy.) So, the kid had a contract out on him from the get-go. He suspected it but didn't care, and he got pretty popular for being a stand-up guy, one of the few people left you could trust who wouldn't turn around and backstab you like a mook...a total square, doing stuff for people just to help them out of a jam, such as being dead or running out of wine. Anybody, even Gino 'the Cyclops' or Tony 'the Breath', would get popular quick if they could do that. But when the carin' carpenter (heheheh, I just made that one up) got too big for his bathrobe, one of his own made men ratted him out to the Romans, who whacked him and then turned around and started their own syndicate with him as capo, but named it after themselves! The Jews call that chutzpah; we call it balls deluxe over here. 
 
Even though Jesus getting whacked means you're off the hook for all your rottenness, you're really not, because nobody could make any moolah off that. So, every single week you gotta pay protection money, plus rat on yourself to one of the consiglieri in a tiny closet, then repeat certain poems over and over while playing with a string of beads, or else you get slow whackage followed by insanely vicious torture way worse than even anything Vito could think up, burning in a fire that never goes out—even though you're already dead. Gotta admit, these dons know how to deal with deadbeat mooks.
 
Anyway, after they whacked him, the body mysteriously disappeared—which almost never happens, right, Vito? That's called Easter, after the east side where the three wiseguys came from, so of course you have to pay another annual fee at the local echo chamber. But then the animal fixation kicks in again: you have to paint chicken eggs weird colors and hide them outside; swear to your kids some rabbit did it, in spite of rabbits' having no discernible artistic talent most of the time; and then make your kids waste a weekend day trying like hell to find the damned things before they start to rot and make a stench like Joey over here after a large pepperoni with anchovy and onion at Luigi's. Makes my eyes start burning just thinking about it.
 
Skip ahead a couple thousand years. As hard as it may be to believe, thousands of broads wearing black tablecloths who live with each other and aren't allowed to touch or even think about dudes...and thousands of wiseguys also in black who seem to really, really dig spending lots of time with little schoolboys but can't touch a dame...these are the ones put in charge of telling you, me and everyone in the world what to do (meaning what not to do) about sex and fun in general. I still am not making this up. They're also in charge of repeating this story to you, bit by bit, in various degrees of excruciating detail, every single week for the rest of your life, for money. Your money. You HAVE to come and pay the protection money every week, or else God whacks you and sends you away to hang out forever with that big redneck goat-guy you like but who does lots of stuff to you that you don't like. But pay it, and you get to go party up in the clouds where everything goes your way as long as you're dead.