Preached by: Venerable Stephen Taylor I’m going to look through our four nave windows onto Christmas. William Blake didn’t really have much patience with the church’s collaboration of a westernised,…
Preached by: Venerable Stephen Taylor
I’m going to look through our four nave windows onto Christmas.
William Blake didn’t really have much patience with the church’s collaboration of a westernised, sanitised, nativity.
He illustrated Milton’s ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ of 1629 with 16 illustrations
Miltons first stanze reads:“This is the month, and this the happy morn / Wherein the Son of Heav’n’s eternal King, / Of wedded maid, and virgin mother born, / Our great redemption from above did bring; / For so the holy sages once did sing, / That he our deadly forfeit should release, / And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.”
William Blake’s illustrations focus less on the earthly manger and the domestic scene more on amplifying Miltons cosmic lines, for example, of the presence of angels dominate the shepherds above the ground. And under the ground, a cosmic battle rages at the birth of God on earth.
His superhero style illustration, The Overthrow of Apollo and the Pagan Gods (1809), illustrates this. The Descent of Peace is a more popular illustration for Christmas cards.
Blakes own words express his belief that peace should be a lived reality. He writes:
The deep of winter came;
What time the secret child,
Descended thro’ the orient gates of the eternal day:
War ceas’d, & all the troops like shadows fled to their abodes.
Steve Turner, the Liverpudlian poet captures Blakes mood about soft Christmas’s.
Christmas is really
for the children.
Especially for children
who like animals, stables,
stars and babies wrapped
in swaddling clothes.
Then there are wise men,
kings in fine robes,
humble shepherds and a
hint of rich perfume.
Easter is not really
for the children
unless accompanied by
a cream filled egg.
It has whips, blood, nails,
a spear and allegations
of body snatching.
It involves politics, God
and the sins of the world.
It is not good for people
of a nervous disposition.
They would do better to
think on rabbits, chickens
and the first snowdrop
of spring.
Or they’d do better to
wait for a re-run of
Christmas without asking
too many questions about
what Jesus did when he grew up
or whether there’s any connection
Blake blatently made the connection
William Turner exhibited a painting of the Holy Family in 1803 when he was 28. It is a convertional portraiture style piece, more traditional than his later religious paintings. These have much more drama, like Jesus driving traders from the temple and his last Chistian work, the angel standing in the sun painted when he was 71 uses all the clours we associated with Turner and shown in his window.
Benedict Arnold spent Christmas in his first major battle in 1775, attempting to lay seige to Quebec. The battle was lost due to a catalogue of curcumstances like winter marshes and smallpox. however, his exectional leadership was noted, and although he sustained his first serious leg injury in the battle, he went on to be one of the most exceptional military leaders for America. Before flipping sides to fight for the British.
Benedict Arnold trained in apothecary like William Curtis and who featured the Helleborus Niger. Black Hellebore, or Christmas Rose in his 1st edirion of The Botatical Magazine 1787, 1799 on his death the periodical changed its name changed to Curtis Botanical magazine. The poinsettia didn’t feature in the magazine until 1834 when it became known to Europeans.
Poinsettias come from Central America, principally an area of southern Mexico called Taxco de Alarcon. The ancient Aztecs used the flowers, which they called cuetlaxochitl, to make dyes and cosmetics while the milky white sap was used to treat fever.
The flower’s latin name is “Euphorbia pulcherrima” which means “the most beautiful Euphorbia” – euphorbia being a large and diverse genus of flowering plants, commonly called spurge.
The poinsettia as we know it today was popularised by Joel Roberts Poinsett in the1820s, who gave the flower its Westernised name. He took cuttings to his home in South Carolina and began cultivating the plants and exporting them to friends and botanical gardens around the world.
More than eight million poinsettias are bought in Britain every year, where is it per head of population the most bought Christmas plant in any country, a tradition that began in Victorian times.
Poinsettias have a long association with Christmas. There is a legend that a Mexican girl called Pepita had no gift to present to the baby Jesus at a church service on Christmas Eve.
Her cousin told her the smallest gift given by someone who loves him would make Jesus happy. So she picked a handful of wildflowers from the roadside and made them into a modest bouquet.
Legend says that when she knelt and placed the bouquet before the Nativity scene, they burst into bright red blooms and the congregation believed they had witnessed a Christmas poinsettia miracle.
From that moment on, the flowers were known as the “Flores de Nochebuena” – “Flowers of the Holy Night”.
Some have suggested the shape of the flower and leaves symbolise the Star of Bethlehem which guided the magi, the three wise men, to the birth of Jesus.
The red leaves are said to represent the blood of Christ and the white sap his purity.
William Blake would have approved of that connection, I think.
The incarnation (God becoming a human in Jesus) risks being lost in layers of adaptation.
The reality of the true story catching on, will be:
transformed lives,
and a transformed world.
Which every way we wrap the story
Let’s not lose that.
Enter your details below to receive the St Mary's weekly newsletter.
If you want to know more about St Mary's, contact the clergy or for another enquiry, please use the Contact Us facility below.
Contact Us