"Twin Miracle"? Huh?

By Chris Karr in News on Dec 22, 2005 3:58PM

We're as happy as anyone that abandoned children are being found and cared for this holiday season, but we're starting to think that some people are taking this whole abandoned Christmas baby thing too far.

In this morning's Tribune, we see a story titled "Church finds twin miracle in vestibule". The story recounts employees at a Lutheran church finding two abandoned children left inside the vestibule. The hospitals were alerted and the children were carted off for a medical checkup.

Now, we defended the naming of baby Jesus in our prior post on the basis that it was the Hispanic Jesus ("Hay-Soos") and our best friend in the second grade was named Jesus. However, naming this brother and sister set of twins "Baby Mary" and "Baby Joseph" reminds us a bit too much of the punchline to "George Lucas in Love". So, we now have a baby Jesus, and babies Mary and Joseph. Except that Jesus is a couple weeks older than Mary and Joseph, who are siblings. It seems that the Lutherans are also Sam Shepard fans.

Finally, despite the good thing that has happened with these children being found and cared for, we think the Tribune's gone a bit overboard declaring this a "miracle". Don't the Tribune editors realize that the special term miracle is reserved for things like Virgin Mary appearing on underpasses and Jesus popping up on pastries?

Before you all start writing back in righteous indignation about our objections, please remember that we're happy these kids were found and are being cared for. On the other hand, there is such a thing as going too far. So stop. Please. (However, we won't fault you if you decide to name the next one Balthazar. We always thought that was pretty cool name.)