Snow really does bring out my inner imp. I’ve known it in Wales, in London, in Oxford, in the United States – the impulse to mischief has always been the same. This year the snowfall found me staying with my goddaughter’s family, below the crest of Bredon Hill. After Mass I spotted her creeping up on her little sister and was preparing to deluge her with a volley of my own, when I lost my footing at a crucial moment. There’s a parable there somewhere, as ever. Tobogganing after lunch was much more satisfactory.
It’s strange how snow and Christmastide seem interlinked in the Western mind when it is so rare in the Middle East, where the story first began. It verges on the ludicrous in the places in the southern hemisphere to which Britain exported Christianity and the rest of the imperial package. “In the bleak mid-winter” sung in an Australian beachfront chapel in the height of summer; “See amid the winter’s snow” dutifully chanted in Cape Town, with the promise of a poolside braai for lunch.
“A cold coming we had of it,” wrote TS Eliot in his famous poem “The Journey of the Magi”. “Just the worst time of year for a journey, and such a long journey: the ways deep and the weather sharp, the very dead of winter.” It seems so unlikely, but then again elements of winter such as the northern hemisphere knows, can’t have been entirely foreign in the Holy Land, or they wouldn’t feature in the Psalms: “He giveth snow like wool; he scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes.”
The journey of the Wise Men colours the early days of Christmastide as they make their way to Bethlehem by way of Jerusalem. They are so evocative and mysterious; so much part of the Christmas story and at the same time so obscure. We don’t even know how many there were. All we know is that they presented three gifts to the Christ Child: gold to acknowledge his kingship, incense to honour his divinity, and myrrh to recognise his humanity and to foreshadow the death he would die.
I know some people who move their Magi, at home or in church, a little bit nearer the crib as Epiphany approaches. It’s a rather nice tradition, nudging them onwards day by day. In Roman churches the custom is to cram in as many characters as possible, producing the famous packed-out presepio scenes where you have to squint to find the manger. This year the Chiesa Nuova, home of the Oratorians, added a figure of St John Henry Newman – the latest saint of St Philip Neri’s community – in his cardinal’s robes.
Traditionally Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar rest at Cologne, where their journey ended (via Constantinople and Milan) long after they had been warned in a dream not to return to Herod. I often wonder about that bit of the narrative, for surely their failure to go back at least in part precipitated that wicked tyrant’s bloodthirsty murder of all the little boys in the surrounding area. Had they gone back to Jerusalem, might they have pretended that they had not found the Christ Child; that it had all been a miscalculation, a mistake?
Perhaps it would have made little difference, for Herod was disturbed by the portent in the sky and insecure enough on his throne to fear anything that might undermine his position. Feasts that speak of the uneasy relationship between faith and power crowd the early days of Christmas: St Stephen; the Holy Innocents; St Thomas of Canterbury. Nestling among them is St John the Evangelist, the great Apostle of the Incarnation, the prologue to whose gospel lays out the great mystery of the Word made Flesh.
Two millennia later, the story of the Wise Men continues to intrigue – and pious legends abound. Grzegorz Górny’s Three Kings, Ten Mysteries is hardly new (Ignatius Press brought out its English edition in 2016), but it’s full of stories that have attached themselves to those intriguing travellers down the years. It opens with a magnificent medieval carving from Autun Cathedral, which I love: three kings all tucked up in bed together and wearing their crowns, being prodded awake by an angel and about to be hurried away.
Walking through the National Gallery in London recently, it occurred to me that there seem to have been as many varied depictions of the Adoration of the Magi as there have been artists willing to paint them. Jan Gossaert’s is probably the maddest, dating from about 1510. The whole world seems to have turned up for the event, and all of heaven as well – all dripping in robes of varying magnificence.
It’s hard not to sympathise with St Joseph, peering out from behind a doorframe and still trying to make sense of it all. It is a bewildering prospect, and yet – whatever our starting point – we still trace the Magi’s journey through the snow. Our gifts are different, certainly. But soiled, broken and imperfect as they are, we lay them at the feet of the same holy, human child.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.