(2,500th in a series)
I did not get up Salmon Creek Road this year so this
picture was made in an earlier year.
It shows the creche Jim and Maxine Wood put in their
yard in observance of the Christmas season. As I study the contact print, it
looks as though the Holy Family was inside the structure, but the visitors, an
angel and kings, were out in the snow.
This brings up the memory that some Biblical scholars
say that the great birth did not take place in the winter but in the spring.
Early day Christians were having problems getting
people to observe the season. The Romans had a big observance (the winter
solstice, perhaps?) at that season, and so the Christians sort of took it over.
What is important is not the actual timing but all that
came of it, the ultimate being the teachings, which we observe with only varying
success: "Worship God and be good to each other."
There's a Catalan (Spanish) folk song called, in
translation, "Christmas Spring:"
"When the winter
snow is past
then the spring awaking
makes the world a
garden fair
all its gloom
forsaking.
So one radiant, starry
night
sprang a blossom full
of light
to the dreary earth
in lowly birth
all the world adorning
on that Christmas
morning."
The only timing given in Luke 2 is "In those days . .
."
The timing is not important. The results are.
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Photo by Elizabeth Widel |
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Saluting the season
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