Making People Laugh is Mystical

Jim Gaffigan is a funny guy. Just ask his wife or his five kids, or ask the five brothers and sisters he grew up with in Indiana. You could ask all the folks he's cracked up on the TV guest appearances he's made, as he did not long ago on the Rachael Ray show. Better yet, you could ask the people at TV Land, the broadcaster which has picked up The Gaffigan Show.  It will shoot in New York and begin airing next year. Check out, also, the two million followers he has on Twitter.

One thing you should understand, though. Gaffigan works clean. No questionable material mars his act. That's a tribute to his family - to wife Jeannie and to those five children - and to his Catholic faith, which he takes seriously indeed. The Gaffigan family lives in a Manhattan apartment, and they're members of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral parish.

Christie Chicoine wrote about Gaffigan recently in Catholic New York, the archdiocesan newspaper, and mentioned the way he loves to make people laugh.

"There is something gratifying about being able to change someone's mood," he told her. "There's something mystical about it. You can make someone laugh and then they can feel bad afterward. Or you can make someone laugh, and they feel better."  The latter, of course, is Gaffigan's style, and he'll stay with it.

Despite the five happy kids and the sunny outlook, though, there have been tragic moments in the Gaffigans' marriage, and they've grown through the experience. There were four other pregnancies which ended in sorrow - including their third child, who died the same day that she was born.

"We were able to hold our baby until she fell asleep and didn't wake up," Jeannie Gaffigan said of that day in 2008. And then their prayers were answered on Mother's Day of the following year, when their third daughter was born. "I think the Blessed Mother was showing me that through great pain, in a very literal way, comes a great gift from God," said Jeannie.

Jim Gaffigan's comic shtick concentrates on his love for food - any kind of food, and the junkier the better. His newest book is Food: A Love Story, typical of his humorous approach to life. He describes it, semi-seriously, as the "romanticizing of laziness" and a "confession of gluttony." An earlier book was titled Dad Is Fat - which, though hardly an accurate description of the comedian, works its comic magic as well.

The Jim Gaffigan Show, to begin broadcasting next year, was inspired by Gaffigan's own real-life experience, exploring one New Yorker's struggle to balance family life, stand-up comedy, and an insatiable appetite for food. As with all of his material, it's a collaborative effort. Jim and Jeannie hope their work attracts not only Catholics, but people of all faith - and of none.

Like the chapter in Dad Is Fat, which Gaffigan titled "Letter to My Children."

"You may be wondering how I wrote this book," he says. "From a very early age, you all instinctively knew I wasn't that bright of a guy. Probably from all the times you had to correct me when I couldn't read all the words in The Cat in the Hat . . . Love, Dad."

(This essay is this week's “Light One Candle” column, written by Jerry Costello, of The Christophers; it is one of a series of weekly columns that deal with a variety of topics and current events.)

Background information:

The Christophers

Jim Gaffigan's website