"The 'danger of the holy innocents' is reenacted in a church courtyard in Burgos in northern Spain as a man leaps over a group of babies lying on a mattress in the street. Here society's instinct to protect helpless infants is given both a physical representation and a biblical parallel. King Herod, upon hearing that the 'King of Kings' had been born in Bethlehem, ordered all male babies in the region to be killed. The baby Jesus escaped the slaughter when Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt. Similarly, these Burgos babies face a ritual danger and escape. When the man leaps over them, he embodies the hazard; when he lands safely, the hazard has passed and the babies have been symbolically prepared for a safe passage through childhood."