The never ending flow into town of brides, inclement weather and orgasms all share a commonality centered around a 16th century statue of Jesus and a saint that believed in the power of re-gifting.
The Infant of Prague is wooden Barbie sized image toddler Jesus given to Saint Teresa of Avila. Teresa thought about a pal’s upcoming wedding and how with a new bow on his head the image of Jesus would look lovely at the reception’s gift table so she re-gifted the statue. Later the pal’s daughter married and her mother re-gifted the image yet again to give her daughter. When the daughter later died the statue returned to the Carmelite order of nuns St. Teresa once belonged to.
This toddler image of Jesus became wildly popular in both Mexico and Ireland. When I was a child, on the day of the parish picnic, my Irish mother would turn her Infant of Prague to face to wall ensuring no rain on day of the parish picnic. In today’s San Miguel if you are a bride not wanting rain on your wedding you’ll turn the statue to face the wall.
When I do tours for destination weddings I’ll get the couple an Infant of Prague as it is considered an auspicious wedding day gift to give a couple from its long history of a wedding day gift. Recently we had rain all day on a Friday so the bride called me that night to ask for her gift early on Saturday so she could turn the image to the wall and not have rain on her afternoon wedding. And she didn’t.
You’ll find Teresa, the once upon a time owner of the Infant of Prague, in churches around town often holding a book and pen as she was a prolific writer. Twice I’ve women on tours tell me they got their college degrees in the writings of St. Teresa. You can google them and even translated they are lovely all about God being in the moment with her.
Teresa got so into the notion of being one with God she would levitate and have orgasms. These were known as her ecstasies. If you ride two of our city buses and look up on the ceiling you’ll see an image of a life-sized nun with a funny look on her face. That would be Teresa in one of her ecstasies.
Last Christmas Eve I had a priest from Dublin on a tour and I wasn’t going to share that story fearing he would find it vulgar. So, of course, I did.
He was quite for a long time after until responding “St. Teresa would like riding the buses in here in San Miguel because the roads are so bumpy.”
Joseph Toone is the Historical Society’s short-story award winning author of the SMA Secrets book series. All books in the series are Amazon bestsellers in Mexican Travel and Holidays. Toone is SMA’s expert and TripAdvisor’s top ranked historical tour guide telling the stories behind what we do in today’s SMA. Visit HistoryAndCultureWalkin
