Word of the Day Challenge: MAGI
I joined some Christmas pages at Facebook because the posts on these pages featured things like pictures of Christmas trees and snapshots of winter scenes and all kinds of decorations. There were also the usual Baby Jesus in a manager with the the Christmas star hanging over head prints. Krampus was starting to show up too.
I am fond of the vintage Santa pictures. They’re festive. I’m also fond of Krampus.
Of course some posts hit the religious aspects pretty hard, and by hitting it hard I mean that Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus didn’t look like they came from the Middle East and in one memorable meme Mary had a Farrah Fawcett hairdo. Those posts were relentless. I get it, I get it, Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus were as pure and white as the driven snow. They weren’t brown, they weren’t even slightly beige. They were white. White, white white…alright we get it already.
To be honest, I don’t care what color people want to paint the holy family, it’s really not important in the grand scheme of things. The birth of Jesus is a story about hope and I love stories about hope.
Just as a historical sidenote- the Wisemen who were from the East- they were Kings( as the story goes ) Kings didn’t ride camels, they would have rode on horseback and if that isn’t a powerful image, I don’t know what is.
Leopold Kupelwieser, The Three Kings riding to Bethlehem: Whenever you see movies about this time period, the actors are riding on camels. However, people in northern Arabia typically only rode Arabian horses. At the time of Christ’s birth, camels were used as pack animals, but wealthy travelers used the more comfortable and swift hors
But then along with Mary looking like Farah Fawcett, the the ones of Santa kneeling at Baby Jesus’ cradle started to pop up.
Like I said, I could understand the need for some people to put forth the image of Mary being pure and pristine with her Farrah Fawcett hairdo, I didn’t understand why anyone felt the need to force Santa- who we can agree on is a fictional character- to his knees and for him to then humble himself like this:
I suppose this is Christian Extremists’ way of reminding us WHO Christmas really ‘belongs’ too (spoiler alert, it ain’t really Jesus to his biggest supporters, Sports Fans ) and in that- if you know what’s good for you you’ll admit it TO THEM that you agree and you will do it while you are on your knees.
The thing about that boot on the back of the neck thing- it just begs for someone or a lot of ‘someones’ to rebel.
I’m willing to hang around to see what form that movement takes , but given Krampus is becoming a thing for Christmas now I think it’s already started.
The Yule Cat and Krampus
AKA The Perfect Storm
Part of the text was historical, a good part certainly not. One scientist recently argued that our original ancestry was black in color and that white is a genetic mutation. Not sure how we can conclude either way with certainty or if it matters. Crucified or not, Jesus was Middle Eastern, not Aryan, but the painters in Italy in the Renaissance painted what their patrons wanted to buy, not historical truth. Bethlehem may not have been under direct rule from Rome at the time Jesus was born and no one taxes someone else’s country. No ruler shuts down the economy for a census; it makes no sense. Rather, after Jesus died, in the process of church building, writers embellished the story of his birth, or fabricated it entirely, in order to market Christianity to the world. Must say, probably the most effective marketing campaign in recorded history.
That said, if one can separate what Jesus probably said from the window dressing, there are some truths about how to live and how to treat others that are worth retaining.
We went to my brother-in-laws for Christmas Eve and there was a friend of theirs there and she was telling us how she used to be a Mormon. So as she is talking she starts telling us about how she always questioned the preacher. I don’t know if she meant the one from the Mormon church or another church she ended up at, but she supposedly asked that if Adam and Eve were both white and they procreated starting with them, then how do they explain people of color? I don’t think she ever got an answer but it was a good question.
We are suspicious of Nativity scene figure that arre too European – blond, blue eyed. the last couple years the Yule cat has been creeping into the nativity scene and our Christmas stories – don’t treat your cat well, give presents, and such and a large Grey cat ( the Grey Menace) comes to beat you up. Also our Nativity scene is Heterodoxical – multiple Jesii – from many nativity sets, many Mary’s and Joseph’s and the infamous Race Car Santa’s. Gotta lighten up a bit people!
I worked Godzilla into mine, and then my Pirates and then one year my cat Kolchak made off with Baby Jesus and that was sort of the end of that. LOL.
Cats love Baby Jesus…they just wan to save him form a canine-centric brainwashing by the lackies of the dog loving elite. Cats rule! and Dogs drool!