Don't forget to leave food and drink for the Three Wise Men

The lucky children who wake up this Saturday morning and find their house full of gifts will not have time (or age) to think about many things. But what about those who, one more year, will find that their Majesties have not taken them into account, although they left them powder kegs for themselves and water for their camels, as is required? Perhaps when these children grow up they will identify with the thoughts of Friedrich Hölderlin.

“Man is a god when he dreams and a beggar when he reflects, and when enthusiasm disappears, there he remains, like a prodigal son whom his father threw out of the house, contemplating the miserable pennies with which compassion eased his path.” The toy, if it has arrived, does not look as it appeared in the television advertisement. Or it is a crude, cheaper copy of the object of his desires. And if there isn’t even a toy…

“Could it be that the Kings didn’t like what I left them to eat?” the child will ask the mother. And the mother, who will have strangely wet eyes, will try to convince him otherwise. “They have eaten everything! The powders have disappeared and there is only a little bit of water left in the bucket, but that is because the camels must not have been very thirsty anymore. Maybe they left something for you again at the church.”

And the boy will go again on January 6 to the parish to collect the alternatives with which “compassion eased his path.” Toys in good condition, but they don’t look like first hand. Without original packaging and, many times, without even batteries. Perhaps this will be the last January 6th in which I go looking for forgotten gifts far from home. It already has an age and everything has an expiration date. Everything expires, even the illusion.

Does everything expire? No. The boy will grow up, will be a father and will try to give his daughters the gifts that he did not have and all the love that he did have (more is impossible: there is none). Years will pass, the child will be a grandfather; and his daughters, mothers. Things will go good and bad, like in all families. Joys and sorrows, welcomes and goodbyes. New customs will be adopted and old traditions will be maintained, such as the Polvorones and Agua on January 5th.

Or nougat and milk. Or a glass of anise. Anything that helps the Kings regain their strength. A legion of children will become adults without knowing what myrrh is, but without questioning that they must be left something to eat and drink. According to Saint Matthew, wise men traveled from the East in search of the “newborn king of the Jews.” When they entered the stable and saw him, they fell down to offer him gold, frankincense and, yes, myrrh.

In fact, the Gospel of Saint Matthew says only that, that they were wise men. It does not specify if they were kings, if there were three of them and if their names were Gaspar, Melchior and Baltasar, but that is what tradition and the apocryphal gospels wanted, which took their number for granted (the question of their names is another story) for the Holy Trinity. and for the three gifts they brought, as symbolic as the children’s offerings on the night of January 5 to 6.

Melchior’s gold, which identifies power, was intended to recognize that the baby in the manger would be king of kings. Gaspar’s incense, an aroma related to the cult of divinity, identified him as the son of God. And Baltasar’s myrrh, an aromatic resin with medicinal properties that is obtained by making an incision in the trunk of the Commiphora myrrha, predicted his future sufferings. Because?

Because myrrh has been used since ancient times to embalm the dead or to make ointments with beneficial uses; among others, as an anesthetic for the dying or (diluted in wine) as a sedative for those condemned to death. This is how the future of the son of Joseph and Mary was sealed by the magi of the Gospel of Saint Matthew (magicians in the sense of astronomers, wise people who obtain information from stars such as the Eastern Star).

Jesus would be a king of kings and they would venerate him as the son of God, but he was predestined to great torments. None of this will torment the little ones who will go to bed nervous, perhaps after having seen the parade of the Three Wise Men in their city, without being at all bothered by the fact that the same characters arrive at practically the same time to a thousand different places by camel, by boat, by parachute, in…

If they were able to avoid Herod’s surveillance and reach their destination on time thanks to heaven, they can do whatever they set out to do. They are wizards and magical. That’s why they can also arrive however they want. Like magic queens, if necessary. Since the Roman domination of Judea many things have changed, except the illusion of children, even that of those who are gods when they write their letter to the Kings and beggars when they wake up.

Now all the streets are paved, not like before, when four drops fell and the open field that today is a boulevard turned into a muddy mess. There, with imaginary goals, the kids played endless soccer games. If there was a quorum, it was decided which shots were legal goals and which had crossed a phantom crossbar. And if there was no quorum, the owner of the ball decided, which was why he was the owner.

The best balls were leather ones, like those from Estudio Estadio, but the usual ones were made of rubber, cheaper, which could not be inflated again and could not withstand many whiplashes, cannon shots, chumbazos or pepinazos. There was a time when the neighborhood was a land of promise and a printing error on the tickets for the Velasco raffles (a family of fairgrounds that still exists) flooded the local kids with leather balls.

That year, a child asked the Three Wise Men for a removable soccer goal, as removable were the chains and the swing seats, which many children took home when they were finished because the other accessories, the official ones, didn’t even last. two days each time they installed them. He was a child so used to not giving up that it didn’t even occur to him to ask for two goals, which would have been logical.

That child’s father had very few gifts because he had to work when he should have been at school. It was another country. He was a worker, like Saint Joseph. Before his childhood was taken away from him, he asked for a cardboard horse and, lo and behold, they brought it to him. It didn’t last long because he put it in a basin and the water acted like acid. Even so, he did not renounce the Polvorones and the drink for the Kings. “So as not to lose hope,” he said.

There was no surprise. Of course, his son didn’t get the removable goal. He wasn’t in church either. Today no one destroys the swings. What was a quagmire has been landscaped and has areas for sports, including a small indoor soccer court. But many children no longer need it (at least the lucky ones, those who are not at risk of poverty or exclusion) because they do not play in the street, but at home. With the screens.