If I were saint — which, let’s just be clear, will never, ever, ever happen — I’d like my relic to be a barrette. You know: those wedge-shaped, snap-in-place “All-Day Hold Hair Clips” that are metal, and sometimes black, and in my case chipped. No matter how long or short my hair is, anywhere from one inch to two feet, it wants to grind into my forehead and poke me in the eyes. Not fun.

I’ve spent most of my life pushing hair out of my face. Then I discovered All-Day Hold Hair Clips and got my life back. I wear one. All. The. Time. Have spares in my purse, my backpack, my luggage, my travel toiletry kit, the kitchen, on my desk. . . . I’ll pull out a pair of pants I haven’t worn in a year, and dollars to donuts the pockets will hold at least one A-DHHC. So there are more than enough relics to share between the myriad places of worship that might want to honor me. It’s nice knowing that people will be able to venerate simultaneously my All-Day Hold Hair Clips.

Note my use of the word venerate. Venerate does not mean worship; it means “regard with great respect.” Christianity has always frowned upon worshiping anything that is not God. You can pray before a relic, but you shouldn’t pray to a relic. A relic is simply a tool, a shortcut if you will, to bring the devout closer to God, because saints are of course in heaven and thus close to God themselves.

I’ve received some criticism that The Book of Boy is “un-Catholic” in its descriptions of pilgrims collecting relics, often illicitly, and fawning over them. These critics have an excellent knowledge of theology but not much of history, because the Middle Ages were a centuries-long relics mart. Wars were fought, and cities founded and vanquished, for the bones and blood of saints and martyrs.

To be fair, the average medieval Joe didn’t have a nuanced grasp of “worship” versus “venerate,” and didn’t care. Nor did people spend too much energy fretting over whether a specific relic was authentic — if it might be the finger of Saint Whosit or the veil of Saint Whatsit, that was good enough.

Church leaders agreed, on the argument that anything which inspires thoughts of salvation and penance is doing good. I like that. If it helps you to be good, then it is good. [Brushes off hands.] On the other hand, if you’re offered a brand-new Catherine Gilbert Murdock All-Day Hold Hair Clip, decline. Hold out for the scratched one covered in pocket lint. The second one is surely mine.

For a fascinating introduction to relics in the medieval mind, check out Patrick Geary’s Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Middle Ages, Princeton University Press, 1978.