O.L. and Miss Velma Celebrate Christmas

Christmas is about love and family and Religion and “Fairytale of New York” and all that stuff. But for me, for years and years, it was also about Dr. O.L. Jaggers and his wife, Miss Velma Jaggers. They ran the Universal World Church in Los Angeles, which featured the Amazing Golden Altar. It was “amazing” in the way that things you've never heard of are supposed to be “amazing.” It looked hopelessly cheesy on TV.

O.L. and Miss Velma were old school evangelists, straight out of the depression/post depression years. I'm not sure what happened, but they develop a crazy streak a mile long and just as wide. O.L. is providing the narration here...“Miss Velma, who is a crack shot...after this she will play the hand organ!” They shot guns on stage. They had “spectacles.” They drove crazily decorated minibus/golf carts around the Golden Altar. They re-enacted various scenes from the Bible and American history. There were animals on stage. It was a like a 1930s circus crossed with a 7th grade American History textbook as read by a Sunday School teacher on acid. I ate it all up.

One year they advertised. “LIVE!...In church next week!...Jesus!” And our TV screens was filled with a few of their parishioners viewed through a lens covered with Vaseline. It was apparently a first person view from Our Lord. “One week only!” O.L. helpfully announced.

This is just a small sample. I miss them so much. Go with God, everyone.