The Miracle of that very first Christmas

Faith it is said moves mountains; some attitudes not so it would seem!

By Stanley Collymore

 

Pubescent in years she’s known to be engaged to a man

several years older than she is. Meanwhile she gets

pregnant though not by the man she betrothed

to, and what’s more she audaciously tells

him this all happened in mysterious

circumstances which she can’t

explain or even fathom

out how she ever got

pregnant in the

first place.

 

But all the same she expects her fiancé to accept

her innocence in what has taken place and

unquestioningly take her at her word.

Rather trustingly, although understandably

at first perplexed about his fiancée’s

condition, her partner does

everything she persuasively asks of him

because he loves and trusts her, ensuring in the process

that an otherwise predictable scandal in the making

and the inevitable social ostracism of his young

bride to be by their community, were he to

roundly reject her, is swiftly nipped in

the bud and instantly averted.

 

Luckily as it turned out for this young woman and

fortunately too for humanity as a whole and the

world at large her fiancé did believe her

implausible story; the resultant

outcome of that momentous decision being that the child she

eventually bore within the love of their unshakable unity

coupled with the bizarre circumstances in which they

found themselves, not only became a truly iconic

figure and universal celebrity in his own right

but significantly as well, throughout the

ensuing centuries that followed his

contentious birth and the historic

martyrdom that climaxed his

death, a spiritual redeemer

and lasting inspiration

to mankind generally

and Christians

specifically.

 

Thankfully the genesis of all that occurred millennia ago, for

it’s a given even in the 21^st Century: an enlightened era as

it’s hailed to be, if such an occurrence did happen for

the first time today, or in anyway were simply to

repeat itself in accordance with what transpired all that

time before, no one would ever believe a word of it;

with the man in question branded a groomer

of underage girls and a paedophile; pilloried, prosecuted

and imprisoned, knowing full well from his prison

cell that his pregnant partner for her outrageous

claim that hers is a virgin pregnancy would

be publicly lambasted as a shameless hussy and

an unmarried mum; have her son taken into care or just

labelled as a fantasist at best; and at worst spitefully

dammed and instantly dismissed as a barefaced

liar and a calculating trollop out to get what

publicity she could for her appalling

notoriety, while determinedly

intent on capitalizing on

it to feather her own

nest financially.

 

© Stanley V. Collymore

12 December 2013.

 

Commentary:

Let me make it perfectly and unequivocally clear that paedophilia as etymologically defined and legally proscribed by the laws of the UK and those of all other civilized countries globally I’ve always found to be totally abhorrent, which is an adherence that’s steadfast for me and that nothing will ever change in that regard.

 

That said I have a similar and implacable abhorrence and utter detestation for as well as a determined aversion to mindless vigilantes. People who’re often troublesomely intellectually challenged; instinctively feral in character and disposition; easily lead, because they’re wholly incapable of thinking for themselves and so become easy prey for those with vested interests and pernicious agendas of their own to fulfil who know this and therefore are well disposed to eagerly manipulating such individuals through their simplistic, invariably misleading but deliberately concocted populist narratives.

 

Credulous persons that despite their other myriad failings are also persistent and incorrigible attention seekers who unsurprisingly jump on any available and convenient bandwagon which they consider is appropriate to adequately facilitate their stupidity, deflect attention away from their own miscreant behaviour and questionable morality, while at the same time hoping that their manipulated and sycophantically subscribed to actions will compensate for their marked lack of personal judgment and self worth.

 

The sort of mindless morons for example whose command and comprehension of the English Language, even though it’s supposedly their native tongue, are so poor that they’re wholly incapable of distinguishing the difference between a paedophile and a paediatrician, with several tragic instances recorded of innocent members of the latter profession having been gratuitously attacked, seriously injured and even forced to move home by viscous and baying mobs of so-called anti-paedophile vigilantes descending on them for the sins of actual or perceived paedophiles.

 

Curiously enough, from my perspective, the predatory shark feeding frenzy that instantaneously erupts within significant sections of British society each time an alleged incident of paedophilia or some other associated “crime” is reported in the media is to say the least particularly worrisome, bearing in mind the reality and social acceptability of marital unions between older men and much younger females, the betrothal of infants, particularly among Europe’s royalty and aristocracy, that were acts replete across global cultures and societies in the past, and in 2013, a trend that significantly developed and intensified in the 20^th Century and shows no signs whatsoever of letting up, is a commonplace feature and popular preference exercised nowadays by markedly older woman in their relentless search for generally perceived to be more virile and much younger men.

 

And let’s not forget that as late as the 19^th Century in Britain it was also socially acceptable an entrenched practice as well for lords of English manors whenever one of their peasant, usually farm workers on their huge estates, got married, permission this specific lord of the manor had to grant them before they were allowed to do so, that the bride in question on her wedding night had an obligation, which neither she nor her husband could duck out of or had any legal recourse to prevent, that expressly determined she had had to sexually spend the time directly after her wedding, and that included her entire wedding night and however much longer after that the said lord of this manor dictated with him, with the ritual and one could say classic obsequiousness of her bridegroom physically taking his bride to the home of the man that would cover her as breeders do with horses.

 

Which makes a complete mockery in my view of these obsessive and predominantly English ancestry searches nowadays by Britons researching their alleged family trees, since by the time these brides were handed back to their lawful husbands they were invariably pregnant by their permitted seducer, and no amount of enthusiastic covering of their own which was subsequently carried out by these respective husband was going to diminish in any way or alter the indisputable fact that the children their wives bore, initially at any rate, and which they then took on the role of father to weren’t their own, no matter how much they deluded themselves, wished it to be, and even accepted it as otherwise than what it really was.

 

Logically in any progressively minded society situations and attitudes are meant to change for the better and enlightened individuals, regardless of how entrenched these social customs or cultural conventions were, sensibly accept that they must go and as a result do everything in their power to ably assist this process. And the sexual, marital and conjugal relationships between ostensibly matured adults, of whatever gender, and legally acknowledged underage minors however physically developed these boys or girls are or how sexually aware they appear to be must rightfully in my opinion be socially circumscribed and the transgressors legally punished.

 

But playing Devil’s Advocate here despite being a committed Christian myself, what’s to stop an outright cynic or atheist from logically asking why does Christianity specifically and the other sections of the religious world in general, notably so the two monotheistic faiths of Judaism and Islam both of whom recognize the phenomenal importance of Jesus Christ and his “miraculous” birth, continue to laud not only his earthly works but significantly too the circumstances of his birth, the latter of which would be routinely condemned and dismissed as absolutely ludicrous as I said earlier in this piece were it to happen in any circumstance in the 21^st Century? Food for thought, wouldn’t you say?

 

This poem I must point out isn’t something I decided to embark on because it’s Christmas time and therefore felt it incumbent on me to do my bit during the Yuletide festival. Far from it, as I’m not a follower and specifically like doing my own thing and that applies equally to Christmas as it does to everything else. But in 1984 I wrote, produced and directed a quite successful community play using this same theme as the core element of that play. The play had a number of favourable and well intentioned reviews and when one of the cast in the know let on that I was in the final stages of expanding the said play into a novel I had many enquiries and some very interesting offers to have this novel published.

 

I turned them all down, significantly because I don’t need the money or am I desperate for the publicity, but principally because when I do have this novel, long completed, eventually published its publication will be on my terms as well as do full credit to the integrity of my work and what I specifically want to convey. In the meantime the novel itself and its title, a precautionary measure against plagiarism, will remain firmly under wraps until I determine otherwise; and for the time being I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with this much later and contemporary poem.

 

Happy Christmas and enjoy it in the same spirit which you would wish for other to extend towards you.