The Feast of the Ass

“F

ormerly, the Feast of the Ass was celebrated on this day, in commemoration of the ‘Flight into Egypt’ says Chambers’ Book of Days, and I have no reason to disbelieve it, though I can’t remember ever noticing it before, and it does seem like the sort of religious festival I would have noticed. We are informed:

The escape of the Holy Family into Egypt was represented by a beautiful girl holding a child at her breast, and seated on an ass, splendidly decorated with trappings of gold-embroidered cloth. After having been led in solemn procession through the streets of the city in which the celebration was held, the ass, with its burden, was taken into the principal church, and placed near the high altar, while the various religious services were performed. In place, however, of the usual responses, the people on this occasion imitated the braying of an ass; and, at the conclusion of the service, the priest, instead of the usual benediction, brayed three times, and was answered by a general hee-hawing from the voices of the whole congregation.

Those were simpler times, I suppose—at least I hope they were. The book doesn’t actually say when this festival was celebrated, but I am assuming that it was one of those medieval frolics that used to engage the minds and bodies of our ancestors in the absence of more sophisticated mass media (think of the asinine antics of Ann Coulter or Benny Hill).

Our present Feast of the Ass is a triptych depicting President Trumpkoff begging the Democrats to save his sorry Ass, then sitting in an empty room waiting for help to come, and finally contemplating a feast of crow. I’m almost sorry that I voted for the guy—no, that’s right, I voted for the actual Republican in the race, Hillary Clinton. You’d have to have been dim as a burnt-out bulb to vote for a failed con-man agent of RasPutin like our Idiot in Chief.

Well, since America has shed its government along with its pretence of greatness, may as well adopt this ceremony as its own. Let the President conclude his address to Congress by braying three times, and let the Senators and Representatives respond in kind. It’s a fitting end to our misbegotten Republic, and a warning to those in the future who might attempt to follow in our failing footsteps.