Religon and booze. And why they wont serve chicken in church.

Where can a sober well dressed man or woman get a drink at 9am on a Sunday morning with other respectable people? Church. It’s called communion and it is served with a snack. But there is a catch. The only booze on offer is red wine and you have to pretend it is the blood of Christ. And you have to imagine that the snack. A small wafer of dried bread, is Christ’s flesh. I was thinking about this because I am working on a book at the moment. The working title is ‘Christianity. The bollocks behind what probably started off as one guy with some not entierly original, but decent and simple ideas about how we can all get along better if we are nice to each other that got twisted and distorted by power and money hungry bastards who took advantage of the fact that man is basically a gullible creature who can easily be controlled by fear…… Yes I realise the title is a tad long. That was kindly pointed out by my publisher. I did it on purpose. That way when I change it they will feel like they had some input.

Anyway. Back to Communion. My parents dragged me along to church on a semi irregular basis as a kid and my early understanding of communion was that it was like halftime at the movies. A chance to have a quick drink and a snack during what seemed to be a very tedious and drawn out process. Kids I noticed were never given a drink or the chips just a hand on the head. When I asked dad why I didn’t get a sip of what I thought was cordial, he explained it was red wine. Even back then I remember thinking it seemed a little early to be hitting the hard stuff. So I wasn’t allowed the wine. What about the chip? Dad explained the chip, which was actually a wafer of bread and was impossible to swallow without the wine to help wash it down. It was only later I discovered the ghoulish back story behind the wine and bread. The wine I get. It’s red. And like xmas morning it is a legitimate excuse to drink booze in the morning. I get it. But the bread thing has always confused me. The bread represents the flesh of Christ but is that really the best they could do? Why not chicken? Isn’t that what human flesh is supposed to taste like? OK so maybe chicken isn’t a breakfast meat. Fish then. Jesus could make that appear at will so it would tie in nicely. And you could serve it cold. Churches could buy it from local Japanese restaurants. They could make it on a Saturday night and leave it for the church people to pick up on a Sunday morning. There would be a problem if there was any left over. Fish wouldn’t store as well as dried bread wafers. But I used to watch with amusement how at the end of communion the priest would finish up the last of the wine in the expensive goblet himself. I noticed he never bothered to gobble up all the left over bread. Funny that. Guess he was more of a blood man than a human flesh man. But perhaps the fish would be more to his liking. He could take the sashimi home each week and have it for Sunday lunch.