My Favorite Character in the Nativity

It's still Christmas - and don't you forget it.  Christmas until Epiphany (at least.  Some hold out till the Feast of the Presentation...)  And since it's still Christmas I'm going to tell you about my favorite character in the nativity scene.

So what if he's not mentioned in the nativity stories (either Matthew or Luke).  Most of the characters we put into our nativity scenes weren't in the nativity stories.

My favorite nativity character is El Caganer (literally "the shitter").

And already I've offended someone, I'm sure.

El Caganer comes to us from Catalan and its neighboring areas, and he's been around since the 17th or 18th century.

Yes.  He's irreverent.  And it's a good thing too.

Kings are used to being treated with reverence.  Kings don't have shit all over them.  But we have a different kind of king, one who's come to lift us up from the dunghill, one who gets down off his high horse and get's dirt on his hands.