Okay first let me start out saying that I used to be a believer, but now I am very suspicious of religion and everything. I would be what you could call an atheist, but I am certainly not sure of anything at this point. This is, however, beside the point.
There seems to be a new kind of jesus bashing… I am not sure where it comes from, and I would like to know.
Christ on a cracker,
Christ on a crutch…
etc…
This is very disrespectful of Christianity, obviously, but I’d like to know where it comes from. I have a lot of friends from new york, and I have also read many things that come from NYC. My question is, does this come from people who are atheist, or does it come from people who are jewish?
Let me use this space to reiterate that I am no way Anti-semetic. I really love jewish people and I respect them a lot. I am in no way prejudiced towards them. I am obviously not sensitive to these things, but I want to know if it is popular in the jewish community to make fun of Jesus like this. Again, I take no offense and find these comments funny, but I simply want to know if it is a disrespect for Christianity based on Jewish beliefs or a disrespect based on Atheist beliefs?
I heard such phrasing from my great-great granduncle, son of a civil war vet, deep in southern Illinois, back in the 1960’s. I doubt he ever even met a Jew, or anyone who admitted to atheism. He was a staunch Methodist (at least he showed up every Sunday).
IMHO, such expressions were used for shock value, and frequently got him chewed out by his wife.
OK that is very interesting…
I grew up in the very religious deep south. I never heard of such things then. I suppose I took it for granted that I probably lived in the most religioius part of the country, and that it had something to do with non-Christians. I guess I could be wrong. Anyone know if it is a common thing among devout Christians?
There was an official ruling on this by Gaudere at one time. So far as I know, it has not been superceded. Her reasoning basically was that popular figures, like Jesus Christ, are fair game for use as curses and epithets. You can say Jesus Christ on a Stick or Martin Luther King, Jr. in a Noose, but you cannot insult a fellow SD member except in the Pit.
I think this practice was invented by Christians, and is probably far more common among Christians (at least nominal Christians) than among atheists or Jews. These expressions are only ‘dirty’ and ‘shocking’ to Christians. To non-Christians, they do not constitute taking the lord’s name in vain, so they carry no real force; it’d be similar to saying ‘holy Stalin!’ or ‘Bill Clinton in a vat of acid!’
It seems to me that such expressions were probably more common in the past than they are now. Steinbeck’s dialectual conversations are full of ‘Chee-rists’ and similar interjections. Presumably, at a time when Christianity was more powerful and more universal in America, those who were nominal Christians but who did not believe there would be any real theological implications for saying these words used them often. Probably around the time of the Second World War, American profanity changed from being religion-based to being sex-based, once it became more acceptable and common to use the S and F words. (Expressions like ‘damn’ and ‘son of a bitch’ were common earlier.)
I haven’t heard a whole lot of these expressions recently. In the moon-landing story in The Onion’s Our Dumb Century, there’s a really funny one: ‘Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket!’ Perhaps that might be a source of it, at least among Onion readers.
Regarding the OP: this type of “swearing” is very explicity NOT disrespectful of Christianity; it is the exact opposite.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain.
Thus, it is considered sinful, blasphemous, to use the name of god as an expression of anger or disgust or whatever.
So, for example, an common such “oath” used to be, instead of for example “Christ on the cross!”, an Elizabethan pottymouth would say, “God’s blood!” But this was not allowed, so as any confused highschool English student can tell you, it was euphemized as " 'sblood!" “God’s wounds!” was euphemize “zounds!” Thus, “Lord blind me” became “blimey,” “By the lady” became “bloody,” etc.
“Jesus” became “Geeze,” or “gee.” “God” became “golly,” “gosh,” etc.
The “oaths” you list are, if you ask me, kind of jokes about that kind of euphemistic piety.
Maybe those bent oaths are new to the OP, but they’re not new. “Christ on a cracker” and “Frith up a tree” are just ways to say, “Man, that’s crazy!” You just put some deity in an impossible wacky situation to illustrate the craziness. “Al’lah on a Harley!,” as you dig.
Well, you, see, you need to possess a functioning sense of humor in order to parse these phrases. The ludicrousness of “Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick!” or “Martin Luther King in a Scaasi gown!” are funny. But I don’t have the time or the space to give a dissertation on “humor” to someone who possesses none.
Maybe SamClem has some info on the origin of Christ on a crutch?
Twenty minutes of googling netted me nothing but the English equivalent: Christ on a bicycle.
I’d be willing to bet that the phrases go back at least a hundred years, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for that on the net.
In other words, to address the premise of the OP, what you have here is not “Jesus-bashing,” but plain, old-fashioned blasphemy, and since the taboo comes from Christianity itself, it’s Christians who are more likely to invent them than non-Christians.
Well, as an Orthodox Jew, I can start off by telling you that even if I were to disrespect Christianity in that manner, I would not use the phrasing “Christ on a…” but “Jesus on a…” Chirst is a term that implies that Jesus is the messiah, a concept that Jews do not agree with.
That aside, the terminology you are referring to is not new at all, but rather old. I remember hearing such terminology for at least twenty years, if not longer. I agree with you that it is disrespectful. While I can’t promise you that it wasn’t a Jew who first uttered it, it is not something that comes from “people who are Jewish” as a whole.
My father said things like this when I was a kid, which was a lot more than 20 years ago. I agree it is not limited to any religion or lack thereof, but since all curses are disrespectful in a sense, I would suspect that a Jewish kid cursing random curses would get more negative feedback from using God’s name in vain than Jesus’. And while I get Zev’s point, I don’t think too many people would consider the use of Christ in Christ on a cracker an endorsement of messiahdom.
My old officemate from New Zealand used Jesus Frog a lot. I like that one.