Advent Calendar Day 7: The Heavenly Host

Over the next month, I'll be offering thoughts on the Nativity set model, a large papercraft crèche that you can find and download here:

https://gumroad.com/l/ThkR

Advent Calendar Day 7: The Heavenly Host

Archangels

I wrote up my reasoning behind the design of the archangels back on day 4, but I ought to elaborate on why I picked four (three of whom are shown together here):

It’s because I’m lazy.

I’ve heard the four-archangel number thrown around since I first became interested in this stuff back in college.  Four is an absolutely fantastic number when it comes to an ensemble, especially if the personalities vary drastically, which I expect they would here.  Three is great if you have a protagonist and side characters, but if you want narrative equality amongst your group with the lean efficiency of a minimal group dynamic, four is the ideal; it’s why I use a gang of four in the Creeps books. 

The Catholic Church only recognizes three (the ones pictured in the middle here): Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the only ones mentioned by name in the canonical scriptures.  But Raphael’s mention, in the Book of Tobit (recognized in orthodox Christian traditions but not officially in Judaic ones), says “I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand ready and enter before the glory of the Lord.”  So where does four come from?

Angel stuff is all over the place in the Bible, and extra-Biblical sources.  These four come from our earliest (and richest source) of angelography, the Book of Enoch.  Enoch wasn’t canonized as part of the old testament/Tanakh (the primary conflict in its inclusion probably the then-radical notion that angels might rebel against God), though it WAS widely read and oft-cited (it’s quoted in Jude and mentioned in the non-canonical Epistle of Barnabus), and has informed much of the theology and myth that surround angels.

So you could go with four, or seven, or ten, or one (the generally accepted possibilities), but like I said, four has the best and most convenient narrative possibility, and that’s where I like to set my tent.  Uriel, of course, isn’t on hand; he’s spiriting John away.

Seraphim

Seraphim are a class of angel mentioned in Enoch (surprise!), Isaiah, and Revelation, and their name means “burning ones,” so I drew ‘em as angels by way of the Human Torch.  They’re described as having six wings (one pair to cover their face in the presence of God, the other their feet, ‘cause feet are dirty). 

Art note – I drew the angels in pen, but did color holds on the seraphim in the computer to turn the line art red for the first row and orange for those in the back.  I then watercolored the color-printed line art.  I’m happy with the results and will likely employ them in the future.

Cherubim

The blue cherubim (the plural form of cherub, culturally recognized as chubby nude babies with feathery wings) are described in Ezekiel.  Six-winged again, though since “feet” is sometimes a biblical euphemism for private parts I hedged my bet and threw their middle pair at crotch-level.  The four animal faces (ox, eagle, lion, and man) come from a popular assumption that the four cherubs seen by Ezekiel are the four “living creatures” described by John R in Revelations are the same quartet. 

Now, these may seem like unusual angel drawings, but I’m actually playing it pretty conservatively; I’m leaving out the whole covered-in-eyes thing and I’m not making hands grow out of anyone’s armpits.  There’s only so much one can do design-wise before you completely sever the connection between subject and audience, and I feel like I pushed these as far as I could go without doing so.

Advent Calendar Day 6: Stable Boy

Over the next month, I'll be offering thoughts on the Nativity set model (a large papercraft crèche that you can find and download here:

https://gumroad.com/l/ThkR

Advent Calendar Day 6: Stable Boy

Though I’ve never seen it played this way, I would expect that Mary and Joseph wouldn’t be the only out-of-towners in for the census, and surely not the only ones for whom the inn had no room.  Were I to tackle a Nativity story, I’d make the stable a crowded, dirty, and possibly dangerous place, with lots of folks from all over huddled in against the elements and the dangers presented by sleeping outdoors in an urban environment.  Part of this would be thematic, but it would also be a logical bend to swing.

A small town might be a trusting town when it comes to known neighbors, but with a big influx of strangers even the most welcoming sorts would likely take precautions against the troubles that might accompany anonymity – a stranger who knows not to whom an ox belongs might feel no guilt were he to contemplate stealing that ox from its nameless owner, or so might the owner assume.  To that end, it seems likely that whomever owned or managed the stable might’ve employed a rough-and-tumble teenager to sit watch at night as deterrent to anyone who might make use of Bethlehem’s sudden and temporary population surplus.

I’ve never encountered a stable boy in a Nativity narrative, but that doesn’t mean there oughtn’t be one.  Mine isn't much moved by the events going on; he just wants his shift to be up so he can blow his wages on some rad sandals.

Advent Calendar Day 5: Shepherds

Over the next month, I'll be offering thoughts on the Nativity set model (a large papercraft crèche that you can find and download here:

https://gumroad.com/l/ThkR

Advent Calendar Day 5: Shepherds

Shepherds, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night, tell us something important:

Christ’s birth, according to the story told in the Bible, WASN’T in December.

Or, at least, that was the reasoning used by the early Church when they attempted to peg down the likeliest date for Christ’s birth, with most of the notables pushing for a March, April, or May birthday: the lambing season.

So why the later move to December 25?   The popular theory is that it was a deliberate attempt by the church to co-opt the many pagan festivals that occurred during this time, as many cultures had solstice celebrations when the day was at its shortest.  But while the church DID appropriate those festivals, and while the church would certainly do this on later occasions – Valentine’s Day, for instance – that wasn’t the case with Christmas, just a happy byproduct.  Many of Christmas’s trappings (Trees and greenery, ec) stem from pagan celebratory practices, but the Dec 25 date precedes the Gregorian method of conversion by cultural appropriation, and is rooted in the idea that Jesus’s conception was the same date as his crucifixion, the latter erroneously calculated by the second/third century Christian author Quintus Tertullianus as March 25^th. 

I’d usually be wary of this theory of the Christmas date motive because when it is proffered it’s mostly by Christians intent on trying to dissociate Christmas from any pagan roots, or, worse, December 25th literalists, and almost any time Christian apologists latch on to a school of thought that supports a theologically rigid but fragile position it’s an immediate red flag on its academic validity (just ‘cause of a terrible, terrible track record).  But the annunciation (conception) argument has one REALLY big thing going for it:

The split in dating between the Eastern and Western churches. 

Eastern churches, at least as far back as the mid-300s, have their annunciation and crucifixion dates set not at March 25 but on April 6^th/7^th, thereby putting their Christmas at January 6^th.

I’d lay money that the Eastern crucifixion date precedes the annunciation one, since the crucifixion date has a deductive starting point in the Gospel of John, whereas the annunciation/birth dates are 100% guesswork.  If the Easterners ran the same place-the-annunciation-at-the-crucifixion-date play that the westerners did, and that seems to be the case, then that offers the simple motive of dating Christmas nine months later rather than assigning it to coincide with pagan festivals.

That said, Christmas certainly benefitted from its alignment with existing festivals, using them as a back door for doctrine and worship in the public sphere. 

Anyway, back to the shepherds.  Watching their flocks in springtime, probably.

When Penny was two, we got her a Fisher-Price “Little People” Nativity set and I was astounded that it came with no shepherd.  Multiple animals, three kings, an angel, and the Holy Family, but no shepherd.  And that really rubbed me the wrong way.  I can’t imagine that the folks at FP are pushing a theological agenda, but I didn’t care for the message created by the absence.  The only folks on hand in the set to pay liege to the Christ child are kings and an angel of God, the cream of the social crop.  Four “haves”, no “have nots.”

The shepherds, the first to be alerted to lil’ Yesu’s presence, are, to me, an extremely important symbolic element of the Christmas story.  They showcase that Christ’s kingdom is first and foremost for the downtrodden, the meek, the poor, all those folks mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount.  Though there are plenty who jump through theological hurdles to try and disenfranchise the disenfranchised (even with shepherds, I’ve seen suggestions that the shepherds in the story were extra special fancy super-shepherds, in charge of temple sheep intended for sacrifice and therefore of high station in their field and community, not common rabble), populism is central to the Christ narrative and, in my view, the Christian faith.  That shepherds and kings (we’ll get into the kings later) are both humbled and awed by the presence of Jesus puts them on the same footing.  They are made equals (right here in the corporeal world, no less!) by the God-child’s arrival.

As someone who’s placed a lot of emotional stock in fairness since I was a wee one, I love the equalization that the shepherds represent in the narrative.

Advent Calendar Day 4: Uriel and Lil' John the Baptist

Over the next month, I'll be offering thoughts on the Nativity set model (a large papercraft crèche that you can find and download here:

https://gumroad.com/l/ThkR

Uriel and John the Baptist:

Jesus’s cousin John, who will later grow up to be the wild-eyed desert mystic and prophet of the Gospels, is probably about six months older than Jesus, and thus presented a problem for theologians who accepted the version of events in which Herod ordered the slaughter of all Hebrew children under the age of two (a deliberate echo by the writer of the Gospel of Matthew to Pharaoh’s edict thirteen hundred years earlier).  Why wasn’t John killed?

The story that evolved was that he was spirited away to join the Holy Family whence they had fled in Egypt, and the vehicle of his deliverance was the angel Uriel. You can see a version of this story in the DaVinci painting Virgin of the Rocks.

Uriel is, according to Rabbinic tradition, one of the four archangels (the four that we’ve culturally come to accept are Uriel, Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael, listed by name in the Book of Enoch, composed between 100 and 300 BCE).

Angels are tricky.  We often take “Messenger of God” mentions as being angels, though context makes it unlikely that they looked inhuman, and rarely is there anything contextual (though theologically there is opposition to this idea) to conflict with the idea that the messengers ARE men, used by God for His purpose.  When angels are identified as such and described, often in the apocalyptic genre with books like Daniel and Revelations, man, they are out there. 

Uriel here takes his design partially from Daniel 10 (dressed in linen, belt of gold, eyes like torches, face like lightning, skin like burnished bronze) and partially from Ezekiel, where I pulled the four-faces thing (though this springs up in plenty of other books and in other forms).  I gave him human feet instead of calf hooves, though.

Lil’ John here hints at his future in the wilderness, with his filthy matted hair and casual feral nudity.

Advent Calendar Day 3: James

Over the next month, I'll be offering thoughts on the Nativity set model (a large papercraft crèche that you can find and download here:

https://gumroad.com/l/ThkR

James, as depicted here, is Joseph’s youngest biological son, still part of his household, and, as such, likely to have traveled with them to Bethlehem.  I have him gathering firewood, as I assume he’d have been the one to run errands, get food, etc, as Joseph stayed near Mary for the sake of both safety and propriety.  

In church and narrative tradition, James serves as a counter to Paul in the early church, treating Christianity not as a new religion but as a sect within Judaism.  He and Paul are at odds over whether Christ’s message is for the Jews or for the entire world.  The apostle Peter serves as their negotiator, espousing a middle path of compromise.  James, in a dual role a high priest of the temple AND a bishop of the early Christian church (not, at the time, conflicting stations) serves as a kind of Chief Justice for early church decisions, and accepts Paul’s dogma-shattering recommendation that gentile converts needn’t behave according to Jewish social contract, but with the caveat that certain other behavioral law be implemented.

 It’s James, I think, from whom we get the legalistic tradition of Christianity, at least symbolically.  Sure, any religion is going to codify behavioral principles over time, but James’ influence directly steers the notion of distinct cultures maintaining their practices in full while still converting to this new faith into what we instead eventually get, which is the desire on the part of the church that the faithful homogenize into the existing Christian culture.  I don’t know if this is a widely-held view, or if it’s held at all, but it’s my take on the fella.

Advent Calendar Day 2: Joseph

Over the next month, I'll be offering thoughts on the Nativity set model (a large papercraft crèche that you can find and download here:

https://gumroad.com/l/ThkR

Day 2: Joseph

This version of Joseph is influenced by the Gospel of James, or the Protevangelium, written about 60 years after the Gospel of Matthew, and he was probably created/developed in order to support the pet theory on the part of some early Christians that Mary remained a virgin throughout her life.  There are a few bits of scripture that run afoul of this concept, but outside of semantic wording there’s still a really big obstacles on this notion:  Jesus’s brothers and sisters.

Centuries later there have been plenty of other explanations proffered, but the easiest one (and the one latched on to by early adherents) was that Joseph had been married before he was engaged to Mary, and that the six siblings of Jesus mentioned in the New Testament –Simon, Joseph Jr, Judas (a different one), James, and two unnamed sisters (do they number two in the gospels? I can't remember, but the plural "sisters" means at least two) – are technically Mary’s stepchildren.

So here’s the story: The priests at the Temple know Mary needs to get married off, but because of the special circumstances surrounding her birth they want to make sure that whatever match occurs is good in the eyes of God.  So they summon all of the bachelors in good standing (Joseph, at this point, is a widower), and perform a ceremony to try and discern who God would wish to be Mary’s husband.  Joseph goes out of religious obligation, but doesn’t really want to be there.  He’s old in his own eyes.  He’s had a happy marriage and he misses his wife and he has a bunch of kids, some of whom are already grown, and he doesn’t want to be an old dad with a wife not much older than his youngest child.  So he just pays lip service to the ceremony and when all the men are supposed to present their staffs he keeps his at his side.  Nothing happens, and the priests do the ceremony again (“we’re not leaving here ‘til God gives us a sign”).  One notices that Joseph is basically lip-synching, and they insist he participates.  When he does, a dove flies over and lands on his staff.  

So Joseph is stuck.  He doesn’t want to marry this kid, but the priests insist that it’s his religious obligation.

In some later versions of this story, Mary comes to live at Joseph’s home during the engagement (not unlikely; she wouldn’t have been able to continue living at the temple), learning to run the household and helping to raise (babysit) James, a few years her junior.

Now we get to the Gospel version, which I think finds greater depth via the prequel-reluctant-husband story.

Joseph is engaged to Mary and discovers that she’s pregnant.  And he chooses to quietly divorce her (the marriage is pretty much in play once the engagement is solidified; it’s the consummation that finalizes it, held off in this instance because of Mary’s youth) rather than make public her condition or insist on punishment.

Joseph has always been my favorite character in the Bible, and it’s because of this.  Even before the story has him learning of the divinity of her pregnancy, he harbors no ill will to her, no desire to reclaim honor by vengeance, no chastisement, nothing of the social barbarity (by our/my standards) that speaks to the time and place and culture from whence he sprung.  And from the time I was a kid, I found more nobility in that than near on anything else in the whole book.

 The version of Joseph espoused by the early church may have been crafted to explain this calm and measured and merciful side, much at odds with his legalistic predecessors.  Joseph is older, so he has the wisdom of experience to recognize and forgive youthful mistakes.  He has children, so the usurpation of his bride’s babymaker by another sire doesn’t threaten his bloodline.  From a pragmatic fatherly standpoint, his teen biological sons may be at risk of fatal punishment were they suspected of the adulterous union, the most likely paramours given household proximity.  And Joseph was a reluctant bridegroom in the first place, so he would likely see Mary’s pregnancy as a blessing, a means by which to remove himself from the engagement through no abandonment of responsibility on his part.

 In The Gospel of Matthew Joseph is told in a dream that Mary’s pregnancy is divine, and that God wishes him to wed her.  

Though some dogma insists that Joseph was wholeheartedly faithful in his belief of this (there’s even a school of thought championed by St. Thomas Aquinas in which Joseph never suspected any hanky panky and knew that Mary could only have conceived divinely and that the divorce was because he thought himself unworthy, which is such a stretch as to boggle my noggin), but I like reflecting on the perpetual doubt that Joseph must have felt.  I prefer my religious figures humanized, and Joseph is at his most admirably human when he discards suspicion, and it doesn’t matter whether that acceptance is rooted in fervent belief or simply the possibility of that belief.  That he opts to wed, that he chooses to raise the child as his own, this is the first example we get of the direction that the New Testament will take, this sense of throwing off the legalism of the previous generations for the love and mercy that will be at the heart of Christianity.

 My version here has a super fancy staff, much grander than his station would suggest, that I figure he might have made himself as a hobby project, because, you know, carpenter.

Advent Calendar Day 1: Mary

Over the next month, I'll be offering thoughts on the Nativity set model (a large papercraft crèche that you can find and download here:

https://gumroad.com/l/ThkR

Day 1: Mary

My version of Mary is influenced by The Gospel of the Origin of the Blessed Version and the Childhood of the Savior, now generally known as The Gospel of Psuedo-Matthew, written in the early 7^th century for a Christian community clamoring for Jesus prequels, and from the Protevangelium, written about fifty years after the Gospel of Luke was laid down.  Both were important sources for medieval sacred art.  

 Mary is was the only daughter of Joachim and Anna, two extremely righteous people who found themselves childless in middle age.  Despite his piety and charity, Joachim (much like Job) was suspected of wickedness by his neighbors, here because God had opted to refuse them children.  We see echoes of the many other late-in-life-miraculous pregnancies in the Bible here, as their prayers are answered, and Anna becomes pregnant with Mary.

 They dedicate Mary to the temple where she goes to live and serve, but as she nears menstrual age the temple priests start to fret.  She has to leave before she gets her period, which would defile the holy place.  So, with much ceremony to determine a match suitable for such a miraculous child, the priests arrange an engagement between twelve-year-old Mary and Joseph, at whose home she goes to live until she reaches fourteen, at which point their marriage will be consummated.

 Now we get to the canonical Gospels, and Mary receives word from the angel Gabriel that she will be with child from the Holy Spirit.

 Her soul doth magnify the Lord, yeah, but she’s also barely a teenager and I expect that the attention of the visitors is a little overwhelming, so I drew her curled up, trying to process the magnitude of the whole thing.

 

Advent Calendar Introduction

Over the next month, I'll be offering thoughts on the Nativity set model (a large papercraft crèche that you can find and download here:
https://gumroad.com/l/ThkR

Religion has always been a lightning rod for fanfiction and headcanons.  Just like folks have spent the last hundred years writing Sherlock Holmes pastiches to explain inconsistencies in the stories or focus on a mentioned case never brought to light, religious scholars have filled scrolls and codexes and manuscripts and books with stories meant to better illuminate those found in scripture.  Some of these stem from a desire to explain away questions that inevitably arise from close readings (Genesis’s Lilith, Numbers’s floating water rock, etc), some from cataloguing stories that sprung up in folk tradition or from an absence of enough narrative to satiate the public’s desire for more (the Infancy Gospels).



When it comes to Christmas, we see a lot of this.  For example: the inkeeper who turns away the Holy Family but permits them to stay in the stable?  Not in the Bible.  He (or she) is a narrative invention, filling the gaps in the story.  It doesn’t conflict with the Gospel, it adds to it, and allows for another hook upon which to hang specific theological messages (and the innkeeper is the recipient of some specific ones).  Over the centuries, many characters have been added, expanded upon, or codified in order to give the story more depth, clarity, or meaning to those who have told it.

The first nativity crèche, assembled in 1223 by St Francis of Assisi, was created in an atmosphere in which there was a great deal of post-biblical tradition assigned to the stories of Jesus, some of it now long-abandoned in mainstream American Protestantism.  In the write-ups that I’ll be doing over the next few days, I’ll pull from a variety of sources to present a nativity in the spirit of those medieval sentiments, using the Bible, apocryphal scripture, regional tradition, narratives, and carols.  These were in the forefront of my mind when designing my versions of the characters, and I hope that they succeed in my purpose: to make the familiar story of Christmas unfamiliar, and remind those who wish to reflect on it just how strange, magical, ancient, and foreign a story it is.

I want to convey my thanks to writer, scholar, fellow Kentuckian, and renowned Christmas pundit Benito Cereno , to whom I reached out when undertaking this project.  Benito suggested some of the characters that I included in the series and I likely wouldn’t have known about them (or at least their cultural connection to the Nativity) without his guidance.