Yes, I knew about the anti-papist origins of “hocus pocus,” a riff on the formula of consecration in Latin in the Mass, hoc est corpus meum, or “this is my body.”
But it turns out the “Hokey Cokey,” as the ditty is known in Scotland, where anti-Catholic prejudice runs high (and little love runs the other way), is also a riff on the eucharistic formula. And now some football fans (that’d be “soccer”) of the Rangers club, which is traditionally Protestant, are trying to get round a ban on chanting anti-Catholic taunts by singing the “Hokey Pokey” at matches against Celtic, which has Catholic roots. Religion is the narrow end of the wedge in these grudges, and the wide end, too.
The Telegraph has the story.
Frankly, I think the site of thousands of Scottish football fans doing the Hokey Pokey ought to be a crime in itself:
You put your right hand in,
You put your right hand out,
You put your right hand in,
And you shake it all about,
You do the hokey pokey
and you turn yourself around
That what it’s all about.

On the other hand, if this gets the Hokey Pokey barred from future family gatherings, it wouldn’t be a terrible thing…
H/T: Catholic World News