There's one in every congregation!

My colleague and friend RevRuth has taken the plunge and will include a Caganer in her Nativity Set this Christmas. She doesn't mention whether any of her faithful yet know this and we await a paragraph in some future Bishop's Letter about Achieving Consensus in the Local Congregation.

The Caganer is of course a little pooping fellow who you place in the straw somewhere to the left of the Pious Donkey or the Praying Sheep in your Nativity Scene. It's a Catalan tradition unknown in Scotland until Christmas 2008 "....when it's inclusion in a local Nativity Scene provoked the first recurrence of ecclesiastical chair-throwing in Portobello since the Reformation."

The Wikipedia entry for Caganer includes the following rationale for the use of the little pooping fellow in Nativity Sets - much of which makes eminent theological sense but will not dissuade any children from suddenly blurting out "Mommy there's somebody doing Number Two behind the sheep!" during a moment of silent adoration on Christmas Eve:

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Possible reasons for placing a man who is in the act of excreting waste in a scene which is widely considered holy include:

• Tradition.
• Perceived humor.
• Finding the Caganer is a fun game, especially for children.
• The Caganer, by creating feces, is fertilizing the Earth. However, this is probably an a posteriori explanation, and few cite this reason for including the Caganer in the Nativity scene.
• The Caganer represents the equality of all people: regardless of status, race, or gender, everyone defecates.
• Increased naturalism of an otherwise archetypal (thus idealised) story, so that it is more believable, taken literally and seriously.
• The idea that God will manifest her/himself when s/he is ready, without regard for whether we human beings are ready or not.
• The caganer reinforces that the infant Jesus is God in human form, with all that being human implies.

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Anyone wanting to purchase something for the Midlothian clergy who have everything can follow this link

Update: I have checked with Alison our Sunday School superintendent and her greatest objection to acquiring such a figure for our Nativity Scene is that I or some subsequent Rector will want to do a live nativity scene in the Precinct one day and will insist on having a live Caganer in order to make the whole thing authentic.