ReligionChurch Jokes

  Preserving the Egg of Life
 
 
 
 Obviously, Football is a syndrome of religious rites symbolizing the
 struggle to preserve the Egg of Life through the rigors of impending
 winter.  The rites begin at the Autumn Equinox and culminate on the
 first day of the New Year, with great festivals identified with bowls
 of plenty.  The festivals are associated with flowers such as roses;
 fruits such as oranges; farm crops such as cotton; and even sun-worship
 and appeasement of great reptiles such as alligators.
 
 In these rites, the Egg of Life is symbolized by what is called
 "The Oval", an inflated bladder covered with hog skin.  The convention
 of "The Oval" is repeated in the architectural oval-shaped design of
 the vast outdoor churches in which the services are held every sabbath
 in every town and city.  Also every Sunday in the greater centers of
 population where an advanced priesthood performs.  These enormous
 churches dominate every college campus; no other edifice compares in
 size with them, and they bear witness to the high spiritual development
 of the culture that produced them.
 
 Literally millions of worshipers attend the sabbath services in these
 open-air churches.  Subconsciously, these hordes are seeking an outlet
 from sexual frustration in anticipation of violent masochism and sadism
 about to be enacted by a highly trained priesthood of young men.  Football
 obviously arises out of the Oedipus complex.  Love of mother dominates
 the entire ritual.  (Notre Dame and Football are synonymous).
 
 The rites are preformed on a green rectangular area  orientated to the
 four directions.  The green area, symbolizing Summer, is striped with
 ominous white lines representing the knifing snows of Winter.  The
 white stripes are repeated in the ceremonial costumes of the four
 whistling monitors who control the services through a time period
 divided into four quarters, symbolizing the four Seasons.
 
 The ceremony begins with colorful processions of musicians and semi-nude
 virgins who move in and out of ritualized patterns.  This excites the
 thousands of worshipers to rise from their seats, shout frenzied poetry
 in unison and chant ecstatic anthems through which runs the Oedipus
 theme of willingness to die for the love of mother.
 
 The actual rites, performed by 22 young priests of perfect physique,
 might appear to the uninitiated as a chaotic conflict concerned only
 with hurting the Oval by kicking it, then endeavoring to rescue and
 protect the Egg.
 
 However, the procedure is highly stylized.  On each side there are
 eleven young men wearing colorful and protective costumes.  The group
 in so-called "possession" of the Oval first arrange themselves in an
 egg-shaped "huddle," as it is called, for a moment of prayerful
 meditation and whispering of secret numbers to each other.
 
 Then they rearrange themselves with relation to the position of the
 Egg.  In a typical "formation" there are seven priests "on the line,"
 seven being a mystical number associated not, as Jung purists might
 contend, with the "seven last words" but actually, with sublimation
 of the "seven deadly sins" into "the seven cardinal principles of
 education."
 
 The central priest crouches over the Egg, protecting it with his
 hands, while over his back quarters hovers the "Quarterback."  The
 transposition of "back quarters" to "quarterback" is easily
 explained by the Adler School.  To the layman the curious posture
 assumed by the "Quarterback," as he hovers over the central priest,
 immediately suggests the Cretan origins of Mycenaean animal art,
 but this popular view is untenable.  Actually, of course, the
 "quarter-back" symbolizes the libido, combining two instincts,
 namely, a) Eros, which strives for even closer union, and b) the
 instinct for destruction of anything which lies in the path of Eros.
 Moreover, the "pleasure-pain" excitement of the hysterical
 worshipers focuses entirely on the actions of the libido-quarter-back.
 Behind him are three priests representing the male triad.
 
 At a given signal, the Egg is passed by sleight-of-hand to one of
 the members of the triad who endeavors to move it by bodily force
 across the white lines of Winter.  This procedure up and down the
 enclosure, continues through the four quarters of the ritual.
 
 At the end of the second quarter, implying the Summer Slostice, the
 processions of musicians and semi-nude virgins are resumed.  After
 forming themselves into pictograms representing alphabetical and
 animal fetishes, the virgins perform a most curious rite requiring
 far more dexterity than the earlier phallic Maypole rituals from
 which it seems to be derived.  Each of the virgins carries a wand
 of shining metal which she spins on her fingertips, tosses playfully
 into the air, and with which she interweaves her body in most
 intricate gyrations.
 
 The virgins perform another important function throughout the entire
 service.  This concerns the mystical rite of "conversion" following
 success of one of the young priests in carrying the Oval across the
 last white line of Winter.  As the moment of "conversion" approaches,
 the virgins kneel at the edge of the rectangle, bury their faces in
 the earth, then raise their arms to heaven in supplication, praying
 that "the uprights will be split."  "Conversion" is indeed a
 dedicated ceremony.