21 August 2006

Hey, You! G-d! Get Your Butt Over Here!

From the Boston Globe we read about the charming (and apparently wide-spread) custom of buying a statue of St. Joseph (Jesus' father, I believe) and burying him upside down facing a building you want to sell.
Donald Ward Cranley doesn’t need to look at the latest economic indicators to know how the real estate market is faring. He just checks the inventory in his shop, Ward’s Gifts, on High Street in Medford.

If sales of the beige, 5-inch St. Joseph statues are slow, it means the real estate market is strong. If sales are brisk, the market is weak. Lately, all signs point to a real estate meltdown: He’s selling 300 statues a month.

"We can’t keep them in stock," he said. "Everybody comes in here looking for them. Realtors are buying a dozen at a time."

St. Joseph statues have long been used by sellers to help move property. Tradition has it that if you bury a statue upside down and facing the property you are trying to sell, St. Joseph will direct a buyer your way.
Long-time readers will know that I am something of a Catholicphile. But here I've got to say that I'm down with the Protestants. G-d is not your servant and, even if He were tempted to help you sell your house, why would burying a statue of His dad upside down catch his attention? In a good way?

1 comment:

Oroborous said...

LOL at the goat.

Why should God care if you have a house, or not ?
Only if She has something in mind for you, and given what Her Earthly agents often go through, I'd rather not be special, and also not have a house. A tent in a field is fine by me.

A quibble, perhaps, about the Boston metro housing market: "Lately, all signs point to a real estate meltdown..." isn't very accurate.
That market's been in trouble for well over a year. Orrin and I went 'round and 'round last summer over that exact topic. You participated in some of those threads.