A (Short) Text for Blue Monday

It's Blue Monday again - the (allegedly) worst day of the year.  The festivities have gone, the winter hasn't and the New Year resolutions are unresolved.

Many people who have been taught the Bible as children have also been wedged full of statistics and verse numbers, books with the most chapters, middle verses and the like. 

Outstanding in this series of not-very-useful information (for none of it is any use at all when trying to help someone understand God's word for them) is the shortest Bible verse.  It is so short and memorable it has become a kind of moderate English expletive:

JESUS WEPT.

Perhaps it's the text for Blue Monday?

Just as well, then, that this is not the shortest verse in the Bible at all.  Only in the English Bible.  Originally written in Greek, the shortest verse in the New Testament is found in Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians: just fourteen Greek letters:

Translation : BE JOYFUL ALWAYS. 1 Thessalonians 5:16

It's also just the antidote for Blue Monday.

The Fine Art of Christmas: The Tenebrist

Gerard van Honthorst was not an Italian - a slightly weird thing for a painting from the 17th century on a Christmas card.  Coming from the Netherlands, he joined a horde - should that be palette - of painters who painted 'The Adoration of the Shepherds.'  

In truth the Christmas story offers limited scope for painters and preachers alike, so its rather down to what you do with the inevitable scene.  What Gerard liked to do, and the reason that he was described as a tenebrist, was compose (in layman's terms) very dark pictures with contrasting light.  As it happens, this scene is one of his classics.  But this is a chopped version.

The original painting is bigger - and all that which has been chopped off is wodges of dark.  It suits Christmas tastes to have a light picture, but van Honthorst was really making the point that the very bright baby is in a very dark place.  The editing loses this point, while making a nice picture for a card.

On Christmas Day at church we prayed for those who are not as blessed as we are on Christmas Day.  We prayed for those who suffer for their faith on Christmas Day.  And later the Soup Kitchen provided an amazing Christmas dinner. 

We tried to keep some dark in.

Because Christmas is more about the darkness than this cropped picture might have us believe.

The Fine Art of Christmas - Starry Night over the Rhone

Atmospherically this is certainly Christmassy.

It might look good on the card but  Christmas wasn't in Van Gogh's mind when he painted this night scene of the River Rhone in September 1888.  He was fascinated by the colours of night and the challenge of painting them.

To fit the painting on the card, a devastating transaction has happened however.  Here is the original painting:

Leaving aside the colour differences we can see that the original has Ursa Major (the Great Bear) constellation with great prominence.  Van Gogh's intention was to make the stars the star over against the gas lighting.  Instead, the card has left in the lovers at the expense of the stars.

Every Christmas we are prone to cut out a little or a lot of heavenly glory to keep humans in the centre of the picture.

The Fine Art of Christmas - The Putti

Here, emerging from the dark stable (on a Christmas Card), is Carlo Maratta's Madonna and Child.  Well, again, it is one of countless versions produced for the Italian devotional market.  Here the virgin might be, as often was in his paintings, his illegitimate daughter.

And then there's the putti.

Peering into my Christmas card are three little chaps.  Possibly chaps.  They cannot be found in the Bible, but they can be found in great numbers on paintings of various kinds.  So, with much academic effort devoted to art the meaning of putti must be over documented?  No.  They have been written about very little apparently, and they are variously little boys, angel thingies, cupid-type thingies or just children.

It's a decent guess that in a Madonna and child scene they are kind of angels, or boys with a heavenly background (if such a thing is possible).

Possible?  The mystical decorations are a waste of Carlo's time.  In the arms of the virgin is a real baby boy.  Yet he is not only a bit heavenly - he is the very centre of heaven's attention.  He is not a half heavenling; he is all human and all divine.

The truth is more wonderful than the putti.