We send out Christmas Cards to our friends using the following convoluted system:
1. I paint an image.
2. Crystal, a church musician, selects a message which is most often taken from a hymn. This can be very challenging. For one thing, she is fully respectful of copyright laws and considers only that which is in the public domain. For another, while some images are easy to do this with - say, shepherds abiding in their fields - others not so much. This one I thought would be a challenge, but she came through.
3. We have them printed by Bamboo Ink - a wonderful local business I totally recommend.
4. I write the insert letter, which if you've ever read this blog before, you will realize just might veer into the silly with little warning. More often than not, my purpose for writing them is to crack myself up, so recipients read them at their own risk.
5. The factory - me - folds, stuffs envelopes, slaps on addresses and stamps, then takes them all to the post office dangerously close to the actual Christmas day.
As suggested, I anticipated that Crystal might be stymied by this tree image, about which you will be forgiven for considering to be just so many Christmas trees and, hence, perhaps entirely secular. I don't think she even had to open a hymnal. She went directly to the text of a hymn by Christina Rosetti. You open this card and the message is "Love Came Down at Christmas. Lovely. Incarnate. Divine."
Artists use the term Happy Accident to describe a wonderful painting success - often a detail in a larger piece - that seems to have happened more by magic than by any deliberate action by the painter. We hope to learn from them. I think this year's Christmas card is a happy accident. Let's drill down.
Why three trees? No idea, just seemed to fit the size of the paper and my mood when I painted it. But three has mystical flow.
Trinity.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
Mother, father, child.
Me and you and a dog named Boo
Lovely. Incarnate. Divine.
As is true of most years and for most people, this year was a mixture of the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good, for us, was all blessing. The bad? Loss of a beloved brother tops the list. For the ugly, I'll just direct you to any newspaper published this year.
But as is true of all years, we end on this note: Love came down at Christmas. Lovely. Incarnate. Divine.
Merry Christmas, dear reader. Peace.
