It’s that time of year when the cards landing on the doormat compete for the title of most fatuous. Will it be a reindeer spouting an obscenity, or a painterly robin perched on a frosted gatepost in snowy landscapes? Might it be a sanitised cartoon of a coach and four outside a snow-encrusted inn, bright yellow lights glowing from within, a kind of Pickwickian fantasy of Victorian yuletide? Or will it be a trio of children around a scarfed snowman, or a Christmas tree, perhaps?
Most likely it will be a sclerotic Father Christmas, or a bright Santa (that’s with a silent ‘t’) as he’s now increasingly known, dominating the foreground or flying through the air on his sledge over a snowy landscape, even though it never snows any more. If your friends or loved ones really lack imagination you may even receive Star Wars or Peter Rabbit cards, which I discover now exist. In fact, browsing the website of one leading card retailer turns out to be a highly depressing experience: just one ‘religious card’ competes with scores of kittens gazing at baubles, entwined polar bears and pheasants in a snowy woodland.
Of course, it’s probably fitting for our godless age that cards explicitly featuring the Christmas story are in a decided minority, while those supporting mammon – our new collective subject of worship – are in ascendance. But while the Mandalorian or the characters of Beatrix Potter have zero to do with the Christmas story, card makers can at least argue that Saint Nicholas was a saint, a long time ago in Turkey somewhere, where it does indeed snow from time to time, even if he had nothing to do with the Christmas story itself. Except we know that the integrity of any of it is very far from their minds: they are simply giving the people what they think the people want.
So this year, I’m going fully God-squad. No red-nosed anthropomorphised reindeer for me; no chuckling Father Christmases or glittery mince pies; and definitely no holly, snowflakes or dreaded ice-skaters. For me it’s all about the nativity – and I’m almost tempted to say the more realistic the better.
Cards explicitly featuring the Christmas story are in a decided minority, while those supporting mammon – our new collective subject of worship – are in ascendance
I’ve been present for the birth of two children, so rather than having shepherds, why don’t we introduce some verisimilitude – the appearance of reality, as the theatrical people say – or drama? After all, we do with almost everything else. How wrong would it be to conjure up a photo-realistic 2,000-year-old birthing scene with AI? Could there be the equivalent of an anaesthetist or the midwife in attendance, because you can bet your bottom dollar that Joseph didn’t manage the delivery on his own? (He was a carpenter and Lambing Live hadn’t been invented then so he’ll have had no idea what was going on.)
In fact, if you believe the Infancy Gospel of James, which dates to the second century and is one of the versions of Christ’s birth that has fallen by the theological wayside (it was deemed apocryphal in 405), on arrival at Bethlehem Joseph actually goes off to find a midwife. He’s so successful that there are two midwives at the birth, one of whom was named Salome. Did Joseph get to cut the umbilical cord? Did he pass out at the sight of blood? In this version it all happens in a cave in the flash of bright light, but it would make for an unforgettable Christmas card.
And it’s one that would bring home the essential point of Christmas, after all. It would be significantly more thought-provoking and relevant to the nativity story than a Christmas pudding or a snowflake, however artfully replicated. It would even be more relevant than the three kings – the Magi – who, as every boy or girl who was once dragooned along to Sunday school knows, didn’t actually arrive at the scene in Bethlehem until quite some time after the birth – 12 days after Christmas, according to the Christian calendar. By then, Jesus and Mary were in a house, apparently, and not in the stable after all, and presumably the Christmas decorations had already been taken down and the tree dumped in the park.
Even if the above is a little literal for your tastes, we can and should still strive to put the Christmas message at the heart of our festive card choice. I will be. Likely as not, I will lean on Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli or Filippo Lippi, or indeed any number of the great Old Masters, to convey the message of the festive period replete with the blue robes, haloes and adoring faces of Mary, the shepherds and potentially even some kings, not that they were there then.
It will be a million miles away from the banality of embossed baubles, wreaths on front doors or frosted letterboxes. If you’re struggling to find anything appropriate, the National Gallery has some attractive nativity scenes from the Wilton Diptych (a pack of eight for a tenner). The Royal Academy range is pretty faithless but has at least one nice angel, as well a ‘Christmas’ polar bear.
All this presupposes that you are choosing to bear the cost of sending cards this Christmas at all, of course: at £1.70 a pop for first class or 87p for second, the very idea of it is presumably fast becoming a luxury that many can no longer afford. But if you are, do make it godly. I can’t claim any inside knowledge, but I’m sure it’s what the Big Fella would want.
Comments