The Feast of the Holy Family
Christmas poinsettia
This feast is usually kept on the Sunday within the octave of Christmas…but as this year that Sunday will fall on the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God it is instead kept today. I know: the delicious complexities of religion that leave you bemused in wonder…never let it be said that the church leaves matters of form and substance to chance…
The traditional Gospel of Mass on this day is the story of the Flight into Eygpt Flight into Egypt…which comes from Matthew’s Gospel and includes the detail of an angel appearing in a dream to Joseph….and given that earlier story of Egypt, dreams and of another man called Joseph who is sold into slavery by his brothers…Matthew was re-setting something of Christ in the New Testament which to his Jewish audience would echo strongly from the story of Joseph from the Old Testament….
The good news, forgive the pun, is that there’s no technicolour dream-coat and no Lloyd Webber music to wrestle with…but there is of course that wonderful piece L’enfance du Christ’ by Hector Berlioz which I’ve on several recordings and has the very haunting passage – the chorus of shepherds – which is often sung at carol concerts…lovely, lovely version below….
http://vaimusic.com/VIDEO/DVD_4303_BSO_Munch.htm
Chorus of the Shepherds
from L’Enfance du Christ (Berlioz)
From: VAI DVD 4303 L’Enfance du Christ
Berlioz
With John McCollum, Florence Kopleff, Theodor Uppman, and Donald Gramm
Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Harvard Glee Club and Radcliffe Choral Society
Charles Munch, cond. (1966)
The twelve days have reached their half way point and in the carol we have six geese a laying….these of course are symbolic….at a heavy stretch….for the six days of creation…more likely the goose egg, soft boiled, was a favourite at feasts and geese were highly prized farmyard animals for that reason…larger than hens eggs they were a natural star in the world of conspicuous consumption that was feasting for those to the manor born….and it is around public feasting that this whole festival…like those of Mardi Gras and Carnival and the Whitsun Games… turn…