Have you ever left your Sacrament Program in your pocket with loose change, and noticed some time later that it had turned pink, or even red? This is a process known as pecuniary roseation and is thought to be a natural defense on the part of the Sacrament Program to avoid mixing the things of Caesar with the things of God. Scientists still don’t understand the mechanisms behind this phenomenon, but it has been noted in stories all around the world. One of the earliest of such stories took place far from the Holy Land.

In the late Han Dynasty, some adventurous Christians (their names cannot be known with any certainty but tradition holds that they were the Saints Anon and Ymous) traveled to China and made Sacrament Programs for an upcoming meeting. The programs were confiscated by local Confucians and thrown in with other contraband seized from more routine smugglers. The Programs were left there for over a week in contact with specie of all different origins. After the sentences had been carried out for the unfortunate saints, two imperial officers, Hong and Bao, took the Sacrament Programs and other valuables as payment (this was standard practice at the time). They noticed the Programs were a deep red color, which they took to be a good omen. They folded the Sacrament Programs into envelopes and put some of the coins inside and then gave the packages to some relatives to whom they owed money. These relatives prospered greatly during the following year and so the story of the lucky red envelopes soon spread. People attributed the luck to the rich, red color of the envelopes (which was indeed very beautiful) rather than the actual source, which was the mystical properties of Sacrament Programs created by martyrs. Soon people all over China were copying the practice.