As a little boy in Buenos Aires the days between Christmas and the Epiphany (Three Wise Kings Day) was an eternity of waiting. Christmas gifts were the useful ones like socks but on El Día de los Tres Reyes Magos when we would place our shoes outside our room the night before, we would find toys.

There was no Argentine child that could not remember Melchor, Gaspar and Baltazar. It was Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. at his St. Edward’s High School religion class that gave me a new look at the significance of the three wise men.

He told us that in the Old Testament, God had made an arrangement with the Israelites in which if they obeyed His Ten Commandments they would go to heaven, while heathens, if good heathens were destined to a place called limbo. When the three wise men showed up at the manger this was a most important event as it signalled the beginning of the New Testament in which non-Israelites could also ascend to heaven. I was amazed because Brother Edwin told us that what the three wise men had in common was that because they were not Israelites they were uncircumcised.

That is most important for me. Some years ago in Mexico City my friend Raúl Guerrero Montemayor had a visiting friend Nonong Quezon, whose father had been president of the Philippines. We went swimming. At the shower room Quezon pointed at me(down there) and said, “Andong, you are suput.”

Yes, (Suput) is my nickname now and it means uncircumcised in Tagalog.