myrrh

After I was so frank about the last word, some of you were incensed and started to myrrhmyrrh. “Gold-durn it,” you said, “where’s the third one?” The magi famously brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the infant Jesus, after all. I was going to demurrh, and pretended the cat had got my tongue (myrrhowr?), but it got so bitter, I was worrhied I might get myrrhdered. So here we go.

The first question is: Why myrrh? The justification of these three gifts – gold, frankincense, and myrrh – rather than something more practical for a newborn (like, uh, a drum solo, I guess, or, you know, diapers and so on) – has typically been on the basis of symbolism: gold for royalty, frankincense for holiness, and myrrh to symbolize… death.

Well, yikes. Super nice gift for a baby, eh. Wise men indeed. Wise women would have brought some skin lotion and talcum powder.

But the Bible doesn’t actually say that’s why myrrh. The Bible doesn’t say why myrrh at all, because whoever wrote the Gospel of Matthew (the book that mentions the gifts) figured everyone would know what kinds of gifts they were. Like, if someone showed up at a baby shower today and gave a Rolex, maybe later commentators would say “That’s symbolic of the passage of time” but people present at the shower would say “Who’s the wise guy who gave the watch?” They would know it’s a flagrant luxury gift appropriate for an adult male at a significant life juncture and, frankly, weirdly overpriced and under-useful for an infant.

Which, however, myrrh actually wasn’t. Well, not the under-useful part, anyway. Because myrrh wasn’t used just for burial. It was used for anointing, and for burning as incense, and to help treat aches and pains, fevers, infections, coughs… Have a look at “Frankincense and myrrh as remedies in children,” by C.A. Michie and E. Cooper, from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, October 1991. Yes, frankincense was also used medicinally, but myrrh even more so – and still is by some people.

And like frankincense, myrrh is the resin of a tree that grows in the area of the horn of Africa (myrrh is genus Commiphora, while frankincense is Boswellia; both are members of the family Burseraceae). International trade routes were well established at the time for these and other much-prized goods from the area. Frankincense and myrrh were luxury gifts of the kind you might very well give a royal infant – or royal adult – without getting suspicious murmurs. (And gold, of course, was always good: cash is king.)

Myrrh does have some narrative value as well. In the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus is on the cross, he’s offered wine mixed with myrrh (in Matthew, it’s not myrrh but gall). In the Gospel of John, his body is wrapped with myrrh and aloes for burial. If you merged the four gospels, you could make some nice narrative connection and foreshadowing with it. But as it is, you at least get a wider view of its cultural roles. It’s not quite like bringing white lilies to a christening, but it’s sort of like if a baby shower had a lovely spread of cold-cut sandwiches for the guests – it’s not that that’s only for funerals, but funerals are one place you’ll get it.

And myrrh is, famously, bitter. Frankincense has a pleasant sweet smell, relatively; myrrh has a more earthy bitterness. Which is why it’s called myrrh. English got the word from Latin myrrha, which got it from Greek μύρρα, which came from a Semitic root meaning ‘bitter’ that also shows up in Arabic and Hebrew words meaning ‘bitterness’. In Greek, the vowel was originally like German ü, and later unrounded like i; the rolled r sound was held long and had “rough breathing” added, which is to say an [h] sound after it. So the Greek pronunciation is a bit like a distinguished-sounding English magician saying “mirror” with a flourish – more fit for magi to say to royalty, as opposed to our modern “mrr” for a mere Mr., or for the cat that may look on a king.