(Image: Come on, man! Can’t you see my woman’s carrying a magic baby?)

Mythologies and religions will have us believe that on this particular night, virgins struggled to find a place where they could deliver their divine offspring. Krishna, Dionysus, and Attis of Phrygia are all examples of deities, or men elevated to that status, that predate Jesus Christ.

Even though we’ve never established that spontaneous pregnancies can occur in humans, and most likely not from an almond inserted into a vagina, as was the case with Attis, scientists have verified that a female blacktip shark in captivity fertilized her own egg.

There are still women who for some reason claim to be virgins when they’re sporting signs of a hump. In fact, as many as one in two hundred US women say they gave birth without having had sexual intercourse. The findings are based on a study of 7,870 women and girls aged 15 to 28.

Forty-five of the participants reported at least one virgin pregnancy “unrelated to the use of assisted reproductive technology.” Simply put, these women say they got knocked up without putting out.

It does get interesting when the study tries to find out what some of the causes for these claims could be. Several of the virgin mothers shared quite a few peculiar characteristics. Almost one third of them had signed a ‘chastity pledge’, vowing for religious reasons not to have sex before they married.

Most of the self-described virgins who became pregnant and the 36 who eventually gave birth also said their parents never or rarely talked to them about birth control. Similarly, 28 percent of the “virgin” mothers’ parents explained that they didn’t possess enough knowledge to discuss sex and contraception with their daughters.

In the end, the researchers of the study entitled “Like a virgin (mother)” acknowledged that scientifically impossible claims showed them that they should take care when interpreting self-reported behavior. Lack of knowledge, religious beliefs, and plain old wishful thinking can cause people to err in what they tell scientists.

Maybe some 30 years from now we will see an inflation of Messiahs born of ignorant women in the States. Since only 36 out of 45 immaculate conceptions led to babies, nine potential second comings were lost to abortions.

It still leaves us with an infinitesimally small chance of a Son of God sequel. We’ve had more than enough time to study the teachings of the first one, so maybe, just maybe, we don’t nail this one to a tree for suggesting that we should all try to get along.