Christmas carols all usually follow the same formulaic pattern in their lyrics, especially the classic ones.
So if you ever find yourself stuck attending mass at Christmastime because you’re staying at your parents’ house and that was the agreement , you can expect to sing about the following: harking angels, jingling bells, joy to this, o’holy that, a twelve gauge shotty — wait, what ?
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In a hilarious turn of events, Sri Lankan churchgoers were stunned to find their hymn booklets containing one very nontraditional version of “Hail Mary” that probably went over a lot better with the hip-hop fans in the crowd than the grey-haired beauties.
The Christmas mass was dubbed the “Joy to the World” service, and I’d say it’s definitely brought a lot of people joy.
Although perhaps not for the reason organizers intended it to.
Advertised as a “festival of music for peace and harmony”, the event was held in the Sri Lanka capital of Colombo and was organized by the Archdiocese of Colombo, and the Joseph Vaz Trust.
The congregation were given specially printed booklets so they could follow along in the Christmas service.
But on the page where the common Christian prayer, Hail Mary, was supposed to be printed was instead the lyrics to Tupac Shakur’s 1996 hit, “Hail Mary.”
Perhaps this was the church’s attempt at throwing Tupac’s number into the ring for the latest and greatest holiday smash hit. Nothing says “Christmas” quite like a ghost in the killing fields.
A picture of the hilarious gaffe was posted it to Twitter where it quickly went viral.
“A lot of people were in shock as whether it was a joke or someone would actually rap the song,” another churchgoer, Andrew Choksy, told CNN . “A few of the older ladies in front of us could not stop looking at the printed booklet.”
I’m sure a lot of that shock had to do with the graphic nature of Tupac’s lyrics, which contain reference to explicit violence, female genitalia, and even the N-word. Not such a church-friendly number.
Once they realized their mistake, organizers were quick to ask for the books back.
“The page was in the middle of the booklet,” Father Da Silva said. “When people looked at his page, they saw it before the start of the show. Two people saw it and alerted it to us.”
He added that the mistake was thanks to a “young boy” who was left in charge of printing the booklets and had accidentally downloaded the wrong version of the song.
“We are very sorry to say that this happened,” Father Da Silva said.
h/t: CNN
