A Second Look at a Christmas Card No 7: What if?

On Christmas night we are bound to wonder.  Hopefully we can wonder at other things than this card makes us wonder, for perhaps it makes us wonder . . .

1. What if the wise men had ignored the star and Santa had been called in to bring the presents instead - would he have followed the star?
2. What if Jesus had been born in St Freda's church tower - how would the star have appeared?
3. What if we all had the kind of tread that gives Santa's boots such amazing grip on the rooftops?
4. What if all the trees in the town had the same evergreen fertiliser that the ones near Santa seem to have?
5. What if, instead of being created by God, the stars of the universe and their positioning had been left to a wallpaper designer?
6. What if there were no demand for Christmas cards - how would the kind of artist that drew this make a living?

A Second Look at a Christmas Card No 6: In the Woods

As Christmas Day draws near the calendar of events is more back story and less must-be-done.  This offers the chance to take time doing things that one normally has no time to do.  

Like working out what this picture is.

Yes, here we have a card with snow on it.  Plus some trees, an owl, a brace of white rabbits (one caught, one waiting to be) and a man who appears to have gone outside in his mother's winter nightgown carrying a wreath.  It is not an easy card to understand.

Investigation leads to the Facebook page of Liz, the artist, who appears to draw great pictures and craft work sometimes relating to fantasy themes and enjoy drinking in South Dakotan bars.  And eventually the picture is uncovered as:

Arctic Santa in Forest

Yet the sense of discovery that this gave me was quickly lost in a flood of unanswered questions:

• What other kind of Santa is there but an Arctic one?
• Why has the reindeer turned into an owl?
• Why is this dubious Santa wearing his Mum's nightgown?
• Why doesn't he catch the other rabbit to make a decent Christmas meal?
• And why has he stolen someone's Christmas wreath?

Sooty Red

Last summer we visited the (reproduced) iron age house at the Chilterns Open Air Museum.  Unseen in the photo is the hole in the roof for the smoke to go out.  And the little thingies (demons, faeries, and the like) to come in as was universally believed.

Chimneys were a great invention.  We've dispensed with them in the centrally-heated-now but at the beginning they were a miracle cure for a very nasty problem.  But along with the chimney continued folklore about hearth-gods and chimney spirits.

What better place, then, for the magical Santa to come in by than the spirit channel of the chimney?  OK, so it messes up his red coat somewhat making the red a sooty red.  But he is a power for good after bogeymen of various kinds spooked the chimney.

At least in this respect Santa says something useful about Christmas.  I guess one way of retranslating the angel's instruction

you shall call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins is

he'll go through a dark place for you but get very dirty in the process. 

Not so much sooty red as blood red.