Images of Christmas

Today we present a Dabbler Christmas extravaganza. Later Susan takes us on a 3D Christmas Eve adventure, but first we invited Dabblers to contribute an image of Christmas and here are those of Nige, Skipper, Philip Wilkinson and ZMKC.

Nige: Let us define our terms. As the scrupulous Nigel insisted in that wonderful Rev Christmas special the other night (if you missed it, for heaven’s sake catch it on the BBC iPlayer), Christmas is the festival that begins at midnight on Christmas Eve. It is preceded, as Nigel didn’t mention, by Xmas – the X denoting eXcess. This orgy of conspicuous consumption is the unfortunate product of a healthy human urge – the desire to give – inflated by commercialism into a grotesque travesty of itself, sweeping away that generous impulse in the stress, frustration and exhaustion of the ever longer, ever madder Xmas frenzy. Mercifully it ends (if only until the Boxing Day sales) with the coming of the first day of Christmas. In this, the Christian festival, we celebrate a great and solemn mystery as best we can – with reverence and merriment, charity and silliness. As is only right and human. Happy Christmas, everyone.

(Top: nativity scene by Conrad von Soest)

Skipper (Delhi, India December 20, 2011):

This week before Christmas, I am going around the world; considering the means with which I keep the creditors at bay, this is a regular occurrence. Outside those countries where Islam reigns supreme, it is difficult to find a place where Christmas goes unnoticed. Where Christianity is scarcely to be found, the reason for the season must be completely unmoored from its religious underpinnings. So, in explaining why The Season is so viral, there can be only one answer: the profane trumps the sacred. People like getting and giving stuff.

Yes, it sounds tawdry, and there is no editorial itch more relentlessly scratched this time of year than the evergreen tirades against the evil twins commercialism and consumerism.

But. Giving and getting is fun. Figuring out why an excuse to do so has spread around the world is easy. So is skipping the scolds.

Philip Wilkinson: What is it about stained glass? I’ve found that my posts about stained-glass windows have consistently been among those attracting the most interest from readers, eliciting many comments, emails, and other responses. I think it’s partly the fact that stained glass windows tell stories, and people like stories. The rich iconography also has something to do with it – the religious imagery in these windows has depth and layers, and readers are often surprised to find that there’s more going on there than they’d thought. And there’s another thing. In England, most of the medieval stained glass was destroyed by iconoclasts in the 17th century. Only a handful of churches (such as York Minster and the parish church at Fairford in Gloucestershire) have anything like a full set of medieval windows. It’s more common to find just a few fragments of old glass, or nothing at all.

So even a 19th-century window can provoke a feeling of reaching back to previous ages. Few more so than this example (below) from Huish Episcopi in Somerset, I felt that sense of reaching back when I wrote about it in a post a year ago:

This is the stained-glass window of the Nativity, designed by Edward Burne-Jones and produced in the workshop of William Morris. Crowded round with onlooking and music-making angels, Mary reclines on the straw of the stable, cradling the infant Jesus in her arms. The Magi wait on the left to present their gifts. It’s an unusual composition, dominated by the pale robes and pinkish wings of the host of angels, topped by the stable roof and the hint of a starry sky, and the elongated figures are very much of their time. If the recumbent Mary seems odd to our eyes, she has a long pedigree: there are examples of this posture in Nativity scenes in medieval stained glass in Chartres and Cologne, worthy sources of inspiration for a window in this noble building crowned with its wonderful tower.

Quick as a flash, a commenter picked up the thread. In the Byzantine Empire, Mary was often pictured as a recumbent figure, and in the Orthodox Churches this was part of an ancient way of portraying the Nativity in a cave, beneath the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Immediately memories of frescoes and mosaics seen on holidays in Istanbul, on visits to the Byzantine churches of Ravenna, on a trip to the magical town of Mistra in Greece, its hills studded with ruined churches, came back to me. Of course, Burne-Jones in this window was drawing not only on western Christian images of the birth of Jesus, but of eastern ones too. Artistic threads coming together from one side of Europe to other.

ZMKC: Surf, beer, tinsel – what more could anyone want on an Australian Christmas morning?

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2 thoughts on “Images of Christmas

  1. john.hh43@googlemail.com'
    John Halliwell
    December 24, 2011 at 18:32

    I think this is a great post; so much variety. Don’t you just loath those 17th century iconoclasts referred to by Phillip Wilkinson. What were they, the town planners of their day?

    The only section missing from the post is a piece by Mahlerman using music to evoke the magic of the non-commercial Christmas. Surely he would have featured this from Rimsky. If ever a piece of music makes me want to go out at midnight and lie gazing at an open, starlit sky it is this:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0vFOax7ZeU

    • andrewnixon@blueyonder.co.uk'
      December 24, 2011 at 18:46

      Stay tuned, John. Many a festive treat from the Dabblers coming up, including Mahlerman.

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