We explore some of Wikipedia’s oddities in our 6,230,819-week series, Wiki Wormhole.
This week’s entry: Feast of the Ass
What it’s about: Not what it sounds like! (Sorry to disappoint!) As every single detail of the Nativity story has been dissected and given its own Christmas carol, even the donkey that enabled Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus’ flight into Egypt gets its own holiday. So the feast is merely a celebration of that particular ass, and no asses, in any sense of the word, are eaten.
Biggest controversy: The Feast of the Ass began as an offshoot of the Feast of Fools, essentially a medieval Christian equivalent to Saturnalia, in which social norms were overturned. Higher- and lower-level clergy would switch roles, church rituals would be satirized, and traditions would be mocked. It seemed to be a carefully scripted performance, but not many details have survived, as later generations of Catholics were eager to downplay or cover up what Wikipedia describes as, “almost blasphemous extravagances.” The 1431 Council of Basel forbid the Feast of Fools, and it’s been largely forgotten.
Strangest fact: Wikipedia tells us the Feast of the Ass is likely a Christianized version of the Roman festival of Cervula, but the page on Cervula mentions nothing whatsoever about the Roman festival, and re-explains the Feast of the Ass, with details that don’t overlap with the feast’s page.
Thing we were happiest to learn: No asses were harmed in the making of this feast. Part of the festivities include a messenger riding an ass into town, hurting the animal with his spurs, until an angel descends and chastises the messenger for cruelty. From what records do survive, it seems a wooden ass was used as a stand-in—Wikipedia uses the phrase “hobby ass,” so enjoy that)—so no actual asses were spurred. (A live animal also would have had to stand still next to the altar for the duration of an entire Mass).
Thing we were unhappiest to learn: Unsurprisingly, the Feast of the Ass managed to work in just a little anti-Semitism. The ceremony seems to have been based on the 6th-century “Sermo contra Judaeos,” or, “Sermon against Jews.” The Feast opened with a priest impersonating a Hebrew prophet, and using their “Messianic utterances” to establish the divinity of Christ, satisfied that he had, “confuted the Jews out of the mouths of their own teachers.”
Also noteworthy: The Feast hasn’t really been a thing for about 600 years. Once the Feast of Fools was banned, the Feast of the Ass followed suit shortly thereafter—though it is noted that the latter “was not considered as objectionable” as the former.
Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: The Sermo contra Judaeos was part of a genre known as pseudo-Augustinian religious text. There are enough works falsely attributed to St. Augustine, (also known as Augustine of Hippo), to fill an entire category, despite genuinely Augustinian works having been cataloged by the saint and his friend and disciple Possidius.
Further Down the Wormhole: The Feast of the Ass takes place on January 14, which is also the birthday of The Today Show, previous worst-traitor-in-American-history Benedict Arnold, Steven Soderbergh, LL Cool J, and Dave Grohl. Grohl, who provided one of 2020’s few highlights by engaging in a public drum battle with 10-year-old percussion prodigy Nandi Bushell, has also been waging a war against foo for over 25 years, leading to an extensive List of songs recorded by Foo Fighters. Besides countless Grohl compositions, the band has performed covers including “Holiday In Cambodia”; “Darling Nikki”; and “867-5309/Jenny,” the ubiquitous 1981 hit performed by Tommy Tutone and written by Jim Keller and Alex Call. Call was the frontman for Clover, a quietly influential act that is the Rosetta Stone of 1980s pop rock. We’ll find the hidden thread that connects Elvis Costello, Toto, and The Doobie Brothers next week.
41 Comments
Only filthy to Americans who don’t know how to spell arse.
As a filthy American, I’ll have you know I routinely say and write “arse” instead. But that’s primarily because I spent 14 years working for a kids’ gaming website that was created by a British couple who insisted that everything be spelled according to British English, despite the company being based in Los Angeles.
Well, if you have to write “arse” on a kids’ gaming website, then you might as well use the Queen’s English.
What in the world gave you the idea this is a “kids’ gaming website”? Gaming site, sure. But the content matter being routinely discussed around these parts is definitely not for kids.
Not only aren’t you getting the joke, you didn’t read the comment I replied to.
Skipping the article to get to the comments? Basic. Skipping the comments to the second generation of replies? That’s next level.
Like skipping TOS before diving into TNG. Crazy, but it might just work.
Reading mistakes happen from time to time. For the record, I did neither of the things you implied in this comment.
I actually did read it, but I apparently misread it.
Oh well consider me corrected then. 😀
I guess there’s neopoint in trying to guess which one…
*throws a Super Attack Pea at you*
*tries to respond, but account was frozen for holding down refresh on her keyboard*
What does a British pirate call his butt?His “yaaarrrse.”
I don’t understand why there are 2 different words for “ass,” nor do I understand where the hell “arse” came from.
It came from the fact that Brits drop Rs where they do exist (roosta) and insert them where they don’t exist (lawr)
This One Punch cunt is a mad cunt.
Well if someone punched you in the cunt, you’d be mad too.
Wocka wocka.
The fact that we don’t use the word ‘arse’ doesn’t mean we don’t know how to spell it.
(deleted Ving Rhames gif, ‘medieval’ quote )
Mental note: establish rap group called Possedius
DJ Diocletian in the hizzzzy
Yo dog, that brings me back to his collaborations with Maximillionaire, Delirious Galeriu$ and Konstanshus on the album “Tetrarchy” back in ‘286.
Phat Phoenicians
Posdnous will sue
Well, never mind then.
For some reason, there were three (3!) half-hour animated specials dedicated to this one ass released in just over a year, from 1977 to 1978: “Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey”, “The Little Christmas Burro” (aka “The Little Brown Burro”), and “The Small One”.Now that’s a well-covered ass.
On a more Sunday-morning note, there is a beautiful children’s book entitled “The Donkey’s Dream” by Barbara Helen Berger, illustrating what is flowing through the sleepy mind of the donkey carrying Mary to Bethlehem: images of a fountain, a city, a rose, other symbols of the Virgin Mary. Check it out on the next Feast of the Ass Day.
It sounds like if you really want some ass eating, the feast of the fools was more likely the time to get it.
I don’t really want to “feast” on the ass. Can I just have a snack?
Everyone is allowed to lick it once or twice and decide they don’t really like it.
A “Nosh Of The Ass”, if you will…
Did anyone read that Nick Cave book And the Ass Saw the Angel? That was weird.
I imagine the ghost of Benedict Arnold is breathing a sigh of relief that he can finally pass along the torch of being the American symbol of traitorism.As for the “Today Show,” my mom used to watch it every morning while I was getting ready for school so it occupies a fair chunk of my cultural memories of the seventies.Gene Siskel was (sadly) the first film critic I ever saw on television. I also distinctly remember Jane Pauley, a month or so into her tenure on the show, giving an editorial where she ripped the television critics of the country new assholes for the unbelievably sexist reviews they wrote about her. She talked about the double standards women faced in the industry and defiantly announced women were here to stay, get used to it.Ten months into living in lockdown, I imagine more than a few of us singles could use a “hobby ass” right now.
I used to love the old Today show of the late 90s into the 00s. It felt much more loose. Sometimes our affiliate station wouldn’t cut to the local weather and you could hear Al Roker make some pretty raunchy jokes.
“Wikipedia tells us the Feast of the Ass is likely a Christianized version of the Roman festival of Cervula,
but the page on Cervula mentions nothing whatsoever about the Roman
festival, and re-explains the Feast of the Ass, with details that don’t
overlap with the feast’s page.”There is a parallel situation with the connection between Christmas and Saturnalia, where the received wisdom that Christmas is a pagan holiday is stretched far beyond the evidence.It’s a decent guess that the early Church during the late Roman purge of paganism might try that, but it’s awfully hard to say much for sure. Not a lot is known about Saturnalia, not a lot is known about early celebrations of Christmas except it seems to have been pretty minor compared to Easter, and it is likely we know only a small fraction of Roman folk celebrations and traditions.It’s entirely possible that Christmas traditions arose from something else pagan, or were invented on their own — people have invented celebrations all through history, not everything is a rerun. We really don’t know, and that’s OK.
Millennials have already brought back the feast of the ass. It’s just much worse now
I imagine a lot of people showed up to that first Feast Of The Ass expecting something different and left disappointed.
Cardi and Megan would like a word and naming rights. LOL!