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| Road to Louveciennes, Snow Effect, 1874 |
Old Christmas by Washington Irving
I've just taken delivery of a new reprint of some Christmas stories by Washington Irving. It is beautifully illustrated with over a hundred illustrations.
Magazine Article
The Evangelical Times has its annual Christmas supplement out. I have an article in it called Is there room in your heart for Jesus?
Netflix Frankenstein
The new Frankenstein is by no means a Christmas movie but we do see lots of ice and snow. The film strays quite a bit from the original novel but apparently the snow and ice is true to the original.
In the 1800s, the Mer de Glace near Chamonix was so big that it almost nosed into settlements in the Chamonix valley as is clear from paintings of the time. People who took the "Grand Tour" across Europe would see it as they headed towards Italy.
Turner painted the scene and Ruskin attempted a photograph. After Charles Dickens visited in 1847, he wrote how the glacier and other sights of Chamonix "are above and beyond one's wildest expectation. I cannot imagine anything in nature more stupendous or sublime. If I were to write about it now, I should quite rave – such prodigious impressions are rampant within me."
In 1816, the famous year without a summer, 18 year old Mary Shelley (then still Woolstonecraft Godwin) hiked to the glacier, now much reduced. She was accompanied by her stepsister Claire Clairemont and soon-to-be husband Percy Shelley, the poet. It would prove to be a major influence when she wrote her famouos novells, providing her with the setting for a pivotal scene between Viktor Frankenstein and the creature.
Setting off on horseback, the trio navigated a vertiginous path with pine trees and snowy hollows. At one point, a mule slipped and they almost fell into the valley. As they ascended, the scenery became ever more barren and dreadful, until they eventually reached Montenvers, where they could walk onto the glacier.
She wrote in her diary, "This is the most desolate place in the world – iced mountains surround it – no sign of vegetation except on the place where we view the scene. It is traversed with irregular crevices whose sides of ice appear blue while the surface is of a dirty white."
Shelley was similarly struck. He wrote later of "a scene in truth of dizzying wonder". And his description of the glacier captured why it had been named a "sea": "The vale itself is filled with a mass of undulating ice. It exhibits an appearance as if frost had suddenly bound up the waves and whirlpools of a mighty torrent …The waves are elevated about 12 or 15ft from the surface of the mass, which is intersected by long gaps of unfathomable depth, the ice of whose sides is more beautifully azure than the sky."
The trip inspired Shelley's 1816 poem Mont Blanc and in one scene in Frankenstein, Mary would place her characters upon the icy ocean's surface.
In Chapter 10 of the 1818 edition, Victor Frankenstein visits Chamonix in search of solace. Struck by guilt following the creature's murder of his brother – as well as the unjust execution of the girl blamed – the scientist climbs to the Mer de Glace in the hope that "the awful and majestic in nature" might salve his woes. Hiking across it, he describes the glacier as "rising like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and interspersed by rifts that sink deep". However, a moment later, his solace is punctured when he sees the creature bounding towards him across the ice for a confrontation.
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen (1845)
Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening-- the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that rolled by dreadfully fast.
One slipper was nowhere to be found; the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. She carried a quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no one had given her a single farthing.
She crept along trembling with cold and hunger--a very picture of sorrow, the poor little thing!
The flakes of snow covered her long fair hair, which fell in beautiful curls around her neck; but of that, of course, she never once now thought. From all the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt so deliciously of roast goose, for you know it was New Year's Eve; yes, of that she thought.
In a corner formed by two houses, of which one advanced more than the other, she seated herself down and cowered together. Her little feet she had drawn close up to her, but she grew colder and colder, and to go home she did not venture, for she had not sold any matches and could not bring a farthing of money: from her father she would certainly get blows, and at home it was cold too, for above her she had only the roof, through which the wind whistled, even though the largest cracks were stopped up with straw and rags.
Her little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford her a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew one out. "Rischt!" how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful light. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it warmed so delightfully. The little girl had already stretched out her feet to warm them too; but--the small flame went out, the stove vanished: she had only the remains of the burnt-out match in her hand.
She rubbed another against the wall: it burned brightly, and where the light fell on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil, so that she could see into the room. On the table was spread a snow-white tablecloth; upon it was a splendid porcelain service, and the roast goose was steaming famously with its stuffing of apple and dried plums. And what was still more capital to behold was, the goose hopped down from the dish, reeled about on the floor with knife and fork in its breast, till it came up to the poor little girl; when--the match went out and nothing but the thick, cold, damp wall was left behind. She lighted another match. Now there she was sitting under the most magnificent Christmas tree: it was still larger, and more decorated than the one which she had seen through the glass door in the rich merchant's house.
Thousands of lights were burning on the green branches, and gaily-colored pictures, such as she had seen in the shop-windows, looked down upon her. The little maiden stretched out her hands towards them when--the match went out. The lights of the Christmas tree rose higher and higher, she saw them now as stars in heaven; one fell down and formed a long trail of fire.
"Someone is just dead!" said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that when a star falls, a soul ascends to God.
She drew another match against the wall: it was again light, and in the lustre there stood the old grandmother, so bright and radiant, so mild, and with such an expression of love.
"Grandmother!" cried the little one. "Oh, take me with you! You go away when the match burns out; you vanish like the warm stove, like the delicious roast goose, and like the magnificent Christmas tree!" And she rubbed the whole bundle of matches quickly against the wall, for she wanted to be quite sure of keeping her grandmother near her. And the matches gave such a brilliant light that it was brighter than at noon-day: never formerly had the grandmother been so beautiful and so tall. She took the little maiden, on her arm, and both flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then above was neither cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety--they were with God.
But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall--frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. "She wanted to warm herself," people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new year.
Christmas Catechism 06 (Final 74-84)
74. Where did Joseph take Jesus and his mother after this?
He took them down to Egypt.
75. Why did he do that?
He was warned to do so in a dream by an angel of the Lord who told him Herod wanted to kill the child.
76. Which prophecy does Matthew say the escape to Egypt fulfilled?
Out of Egypt I called my son.
77. Which prophet made that prophecy?
It was the prophet Hosea.
78. When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, how did he react?
He was furious and gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two and under.
79. Which prophecy does Matthew say this slaughter fulfilled?
A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.
80. Which prophet made that prophecy?
It was the prophet Jeremiah.
81. How did Joseph know it was safe to return to Israel?
God told him in a dream that Herod was dead.
82. Where did Jesus grow up?
In Nazareth in Galilee.
83. What does Luke say about his growing up?
He grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom; God's grace of God was on him.
84. What else does Luke say about his growing up?
He grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man.
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