Impertinent questions about halos

Next time you're in an art museum, and you're thinking, "I'm really only here to impress chicks," wander over to the medieval section. Check out the paintings.

Back in medieval days, you didn't just set up shop as a painter and decide to paint still lifes, a couple of dogs sitting around playing poker, or a white jump-suited Elvis in concert on velvet. Not that they had Elvis back then. And frankly I'm not even sure about velvet, either.

You painted Jesus.

You painted Jesus with a total lack of artistic perspective and depth, with the infant Jesus as a shrunken adult about to present his graduate level dissertation at Brandeis, and most prominently with Jesus adorned with a humongous disc about his head and shoulders that looks, more or less, like a golden Frisbee on steroids. It's commonly known, of course, as a halo.

How do you get one?

The painting above depicts Jesus and his mom, both packing halos so large that the backs of their necks are likely to sustain third-degree burns. One can't be sure if those who followed the Star of Bethlehem to check out the baby Jesus were enthralled with the prospect of seeing the Messiah or with the preternaturally enormous halo he'd been super-endowed with.

When you look at most pictures of Jesus and his apostles, you find something else quite striking: All of them have halos, too! How did that work? Were they all born with halos, just like Jesus, or did Jesus hand out a halo to each apostle as he joined up? And did he ever get those halos back?

Three basic questions

The "halo effect" in paintings of the Medieval and Early Renaissance periods raises many such intriguing questions, all of them blasphemous. But I believe these questions can be boiled down to an essential three:

1) Did Jesus actually appear in public with one of those? If so, why didn't everybody follow him?

2) What about those folks in the paintings who lack halos? Are they evil? Just common folk? Or did they leave their halos in their other suit?

3) Do halos require cleaning and polishing? If so, is there an over-the-counter product? Must you clean a small area in the back first to make sure there's no staining?

I'll defer the answers to these questions to wiser heads than mine, all of which probably possess halos. For now, suffice it to say that I sure wish halos really existed outside of medieval paintings. They could serve as such handy guideposts to everyday life:

Choosing your lawyer

"You're my lawyer? You?"

"Why, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong? You have a halo!"

Assessing a blind date

"First time I've ever met a blind date over Skype before."

"Me too!"

"Heyyy, this is promising! No halo!"

"No, dude, this isn't. You have one."

Vetting the Messiah

"I am your Messiah. I am the Light. I am ..."

"Hold it, buster! Where's your halo?"

"Halo? Umm, errr... that's only in paintings!"

"Na-ah! Oprah has one!"