subOxygen

I was talking with some co-workers today and someone had said holy smokes! I had never thought about it before but… holy? and why smokes? I started to ponder things that could be holy and smoking. I remembered there was some religion that swings this box back and forth as they enter the room, i’m not sure why.. but I wouldn’t think that, that would be the culprit for a term such as HOLY SMOKES! (note the exclamation).
Then I thought about how some religions burn their dead… or that maybe the Vatican had some really good religious cigarettes or something.. Like a good smoke dipped in some funky holy water.. HOLY SMOKE! but.. that probably isn’t it either..

the pope family guy. from: http://familyguy.wikia.com/wiki/Holy_Crap

Then I remembered a movie.. I think it was EuroTrip? Maybe.. Where they end up in the Sistine Chapel (I think this is the stupid place where the stupid pope puts on his stupid hat and waves really stupidly) and somehow set the popes hat on fire or some outrageously impossible happened and they set off the fire off.. And then smoke rises out of the chimney and all the people in the Vatican come running and screaming because apparently a new pope had been chosen..

So I did some wiki searching and found this under “pope”:

Excerpt taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope

“One of the most famous aspects of the papal election process is the means by which the results of a ballot are announced to the world. Once the ballots are counted and bound together, they are burned in a special stove erected in the Sistine Chapel, with the smoke escaping through a small chimney visible from St. Peter’s Square. The ballots from an unsuccessful vote are burned along with a chemical compound in order to produce black smoke, or fumata nera. (Traditionally, wet straw was used to help create the black smoke, but a number of “false alarms” in past conclaves have brought about this concession to modern chemistry.) When a vote is successful, the ballots are burned alone, sending white smoke (fumata bianca) through the chimney and announcing to the world the election of a new pope. At the end of the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI, church bells were also rung to signal that a new pope had been chosen.”

So holy smokes! That’s where I think it came from anyway!
“Holy smokes look at the ta ta’s on that cougar *cat noise raaawwr*”