Melkam Gena - መልካም ገና - Merry Christmas

  

Entoto Mariam Church, Near Addis Ababa

መልካም ገና

Melkam Gena

[Photo By: KPA]

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Heavy Metal at the Skating Rink

Celebration Square Skating Rink
Photo By KPA
January 13. 2019

The skating rink at the Celebration Square in Mississauga blasts music which can be heard a distance away.

And now that the Christmas Season is officially over, the music that the skaters can move to has turned to heavy metal rock music. Even during the holiday season, there were no Christmas songs (how about Jingle Bells) or other less sacred music, but which still have the holiday spirit? We had contemporary pop music of endless "love songs" with sexual and even pornographc conotations, which is now the norm for such music.

But this heavy metal is sinister and evil, where little children innocently move along the ice while the Devil's voice is blasted through the speakers.

Jesus' Earthly Father

We read so much about Mary and Jesus, and the art world has glorified her role in so many ways, that in these few days before Christmas, I thought I would post some paintings and sculptures of Joseph with Jesus.

(Previously posted at Camera Lucida, December 18 2007)


Left: St. Joseph. By Rudolph Blattler, Switzerland, 1899
Right: St. Joseph with the Christ Child.
By Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Il Guercino), Italy, 1600s


Left: St. Joseph and Child. By Enrico Reffo, Italy, 1800s
Right: Saint Joseph and Jesus. By Enrico Manfrini, Italy, 2000


Left: Saint Joseph and Jesus. By Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Spain, 1600s
Right: Holding Heaven. By Ron DiCianni, USA, 2004


Left: Saint Joseph and Jesus. By Giovanni Battista Gaulli (Baciccia), Italy
Right: Saint Joseph and Jesus. By Brother Simeon, USA, 1900s

There is much more at: Oblates of St. Joseph

The Twelve Day of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
A Partridge in a Pear Tree
On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the third day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the fourth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the fifth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the sixth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the seventh day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the eighth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the ninth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
Nine Ladies Dancing
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the tenth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
Ten Lords a Leaping
Nine Ladies Dancing
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the eleventh day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
Eleven Pipers Piping
Ten Lords a Leaping
Nine Ladies Dancing
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

On the twelfth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
12 Drummers Drumming
Eleven Pipers Piping
Ten Lords a Leaping
Nine Ladies Dancing
Eight Maids a Milking
Seven Swans a Swimming
Six Geese a Laying
Five Golden Rings
Four Calling Birds
Three French Hens
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

A Merry Christmas

The Adoration of the Magi
c. 1440/1460
tempera on poplar panel
overall (diameter): 137.3 cm (54 1/16 in.)
framed: 188 x 171.5 x 12.7 cm (74 x 67 1/2 x 5 in.)

Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi
Fra Angelico
Florentine, c. 1395 - 1455
Fra Filippo Lippi
Florentine, c. 1406 - 1469

Samuel H. Kress Collection
National Gallery of Art , Washington D.C.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

The Choir of King's College, Cambridge, 2006

I am writing this post just after midnight. And the message now is clear, and clearer at midnight as messages often are.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

The Choir of King's College, Cambridge, 2006

I am writing this post just after midnight. And the message now is clear, and clearer at midnight as messages often are.

Non-Festive Copper

Simons Department Store, Mississauga
Main Entrance With Christmas Decorations
[Photo By: KPA]

The Square One Mall is slowly getting its X-Mas decorations up. So far, there is plenty of gold and yellow and red and green.

But there is a trend in dark copper.

I've never seen a full-on copper only decoration. Even when mixed with other metallic colors, it is usually very subdued (and minimal), and with a tint of gold rather than the red I'm seeing.

Here's someone who purposefully decorated in copper, but toned it down wth gold and silver.


Why the dark copper in Simons' display window? And notice the burgundy background, and the mannequins in non-festive drab metal grey, lusterless white, and black.

The contemporary world started off by denouncing Christmas ("holiday" became the go-to word). But now Christmas is back.You cannot change the calendar. December 25 is still Christmas. But what contemporary culture has done is to remove as much of the religious and christian celebration that surrounds Christmas to make it into another event, another "holiday," on the calendar.

And who can refuse a glass of eggnog, or a twinkling Christmas tree, or carols about snow and sleighs (or even baby Jesus)?

But the importance of Christmas is still viscerally felt, and it is palpable wherever we go. Christ doesn't disappear by a wave of a wand (or the ordinance of City Hall). We will feel his presence even if the mall decides to give us dark copper instead of shining gold.

And besides, not ALL the mall is doom and gloom. There are still plenty of places to get the spirit of the holiday. And a beautiful carol does sneak through the censors and programmers, and we can hear "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" on the speakers, which we can hum to as we go through shops drinking a Starbucks eggnog latte.

It came upon a midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
“Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
From heaven’s all-gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o’er its Babel sounds
The blessèd angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.

And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!

For lo!, the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.