Every Knee Shall Bow – A Christmas Collection, by Gaye Frances Willard
[Note: This book was provided free of charge by Adams PR Group. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]
There are many different angles in which someone can view a book like this one. As I have commented on numerous occasions [1], I do not celebrate Christmas nor am I a particular fan of the day or the attitude in which people who should know better about its lack of biblical warrant and heathen syncretism. Unfortunately, while the author does at least acknowledge the seriousness of the debate about Christmas, she seems oblivious to the way that her characteristic fondness for painting Santa, sometimes in the context of the newborn Jesus, who was really born at the time of the Feast of Trumpets in the autumn rather than near the Winter solstice as was common for heathen sun gods, is decidedly not a good thing. It ought to be clear therefore that I am by no means agreed with the author’s decision to focus so much attention on an imaginary being who is based tenuously at best on a Hellenistic church father who does not really deserve very much attention anyway.
This book is a short one that manages to provide eight examples of the author’s Christmas paintings, which tend to use a small set of models, along with some commentary about the inspiration for the various books and the author’s view of Christmas in general. Throughout most of the book the author avoids mentioning the obvious biblical objections to Christmas and she at least recognizes that some people find it unacceptable that heathen customs attached to Christmas should be mentioned, and she is insistent in seeking to connect the early supposed St. Nicholas with the rather non-late antiquity portrayal of Santa Claus in the contemporary world which is reflected in her art. Nor does the author acknowledge the fact that Jesus Christ was born several months before December, in either September or October, and that Christmas is not an acceptable date to celebrate Jesus’ birth even if one wished to honor Him in such a fashion. By and large the author’s consistent approach is to connect Santa with the joy of the season and frequently juxtapose the elderly Santa Claus in a kindly pose with the helpless infant Jesus Christ, tying the gift-giving customs of contemporaries with the experiences of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Strangely, Mary and Joseph as well as the wise men of the East and the shepherds and the other figures of Jesus’ birth are absent here as Santa swallows up the attention that would properly belong to these other biblical figures.
Despite my disagreement with the author’s fondness for Christmas and its heathen traditions, it is still shocking that the author’s artwork should be seen as controversial. There is nothing hateful to be found in the artwork or even the not always very helpful text in which the author tries to give an apologia pro sua vita with regards to her approach to the season. By and large the artwork found here, which is beautifully done, it must be admitted, is conventional in its portrayal of Santa Claus and in the helplessness of the infant Jesus. Those who believe it to be improper or ungodly to portray Jesus Christ in artwork are not going to go for a book like this anyway, but neither will they tend to view it as something hateful or controversial, merely as the conventional idolatry of a syncretistic faith. It is truly baffling, at least to this reader, how the artwork of the author should have inspired controversy at all, and the apparent anti-Christian motivation of such hatred for art that is aesthetically pleasant though not doctrinally acceptable gives me a great measure of sympathy for the author’s attempts to promote her views of the season in the knowledge that her work has attracted controversy because it sought to be Christian not because of the biblical perspective of those who opposed it. And if this artwork deserves commentary on the grounds of the biblical hostility to remembering and following heathen customs, it certainly ought not to be controversial for someone to express her faith through the creation of art.
[1] See, for example:
Edge Induced Cohesion 