Merry Christmas!

Been a crazy few weeks but I wanted to check in and wish you a blessed holyday, regardless of how crazy and off-script it’s gone. (We’ve had our share, but nothing worrisome.)

Readers, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate every one of you, and you are in my prayers.

I want to share two worlds of Christmas art with you. The first, the serious one, is Caravaggio’s Nativity, now lost:

File:Caravaggio-Nativity(1600).jpg — Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, public domain, via Wikimedia.

The thing about Caravaggio is that he was an absolute mess. Total wreck. He was not what you’d think of as a holy person. But, nonetheless, he made some of the most stirring sacred art ever.

I suspect in part the reason his works are such spot-on treatments of the human condition (even if they are not to your usual taste, I realize many may prefer different styles of art) is that the artist understood what it was like to be a sinner in need of a Savior.

And that’s something you can do, too. The worse you are at being good, the more profound is the joy at knowing you aren’t stuck this way forever. God is with us, and He is here to deliver us. Rejoice and proclaim the good news!

Now, something completely fun and silly: Here are artist Ed Wheeler’s Santa Classics. He’s got many pages of classic artwork into which Santa Claus has been inserted. The results are mostly just light-hearted entertainment, so don’t make yourself crazy by inferring any deeper message than “What if instead of _________, the artist had made a Santa picture instead?”

I think serious answers to that question (sometimes shock, sometimes poignancy, sometimes not much at all) tells us a lot about the significance of the original artwork. But you can also just scroll and chuckle and move on. Enjoy!

One Soul at a Time

Merry Christmas