You’ve no doubt heard of gold, frankincense and myrrh, the gifts of the magi to the Christ Child. Me too, but I’ve never really considered what it was – at least the myrrh. We all know about gold, but can you still buy frankincense and myrrh? If so, where can you get it and how much will it cost you? So, for next Christmas (It’s never too early to start shopping for next year!), here is a buyers guide to the first Christmas gifts given.
Gold is still gold. A couple of millennia after Jesus’ birth, it’s still an expensive commodity. In the last week of 2005, it’s trading for about $505 dollars an ounce according to CNN. Unless you have you own mine in your back yard, you either have to buy it from a dealer or in the form of jewelry. I’ll leave that up to you as to where to buy it and when. If you decide to buy that ton of gold today, I don’t want you to come back at me if the price drops out.
Frankincense originally comes from trees in the Arabic world and Somalia. It’s essentially dried tree sap and as its name suggests, is an ingredient in incense. Incense used in the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church must include frankincense. You can buy pure frankincense for about a buck and a half an ounce on Amazon.com.
Myrrh is similar to frankincense. It is also a dried tree sap. It’s also used in making smell good products. It also comes from the Somali area and it also goes for a buck and a half on Amazon.com. Pure myrrh is more commonly used in funeral rituals. Apparently, it makes a burning corpse smell better.
Now you know what to get that hard to buy for person on your list. If you decide to do it on the cheap, you can get gold filled jewelry pretty cheaply and a couple of ounces of the tree sap and you’re done for less than 25 bucks. If they complain, point out to them that you just treated them like a god. How much more do they want? Greedy bastids!
Frankincense and Myrhh also come with a warning to keep it out of reach of small children. Makes you wonder how wise those three guys were to give that stuff to a baby, huh?
I hope you all had a Merry Christmas!
VW
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