a purple-headed mountain COVERED in chrism

I went to a christening on Sunday (though not the full-body version pictured here) - not only the third time I'd had to wear a suit in three weeks (I don't have to for work any more), but also the third time I'd had to go to church in three weeks (the other two were weddings). This does prompt a certain amount of conflict between my sincerely held (I trust that's obvious) views on religion, and more complex social instincts like pragmatism and the desire not to cause offence and to be, well, nice.

I might come back to that in a later post. This post is just to poke fun at two things which made me snigger to myself at the time: firstly that we sang All Things Bright And Beautiful, and that line about "the purple-headed mountain" always cracks me up, and seconly that the vicar did a bit of anointing with oil before the full dousing with water bit, and I happen to know that the oil in question (which is, incidentally, holy, thanks to some elderly bloke in a dress waving his hands over it) is called "chrism", which always provokes a bit of a Beavis and Butt-head style fit of chuckling. So, to recap: a man in a dress smearing chrism over small infants. Won't someone think of the children?