Speaker 1: Over the years, I have made many videos on the
subject of Christmas, talking of course about the Nativity, but
then about everything the Christmas Tree, Santa Claus, Rudolph, so
many aspects of the Christmas season. We just are going
to put out a video this year about the Master
of the Innocence because in some ways we're kind of
running out of things to talk about in terms of Christmas,
and I thought this would be a good opportunity to
repost a video that my team thinks is probably my
best explanation of the symbolism of the Christmas story and
the Christmas icon and why Christmas has all the elements
that it has. But this is also an invitation for
you to go back. There's actually a list video list
of all the Christmas stuff that I've talked about, you know,
a way to go back and look at the Christmas
videos that I've done, because like I said, I don't
like talking about them twice. So we might also repost
every year maybe a Christmas video for it to remind
people that it's all there in the old videos on
the YouTube channel. And so please enjoy our video on
why is the Christmas? How does the Christmas found the world?
This is Jonathan Peshew. Welcome to the symbolic world. For
those who don't know, maybe who I am, my job.
I'm an icon carver, which is a bit strange for
some people. There aren't that many icon covers. Actually, probably
they're probably in America, like one, I think, maybe two.
Maybe they're maybe two. There's more in that. There are
more in Greece. There are more in Russia obviously, but
it's not something that is very useful, very I hope
it's useful. Not something that's very usual. Hope that wasn't
that little Freudian slipt there. It's not very usual. And
as I discovered traditional art and Orthodox art, you know,
learning my own skill, but also exploring the icons themselves
and their symbolism, and their relationships between the icons and
scripture and the liturgy and the architecture, and really discovering
this beautiful pattern that we have in our faith. It's
been passed down and kept for thousands of years now.
It's something that I find a lot of joy in.
And so one of the things I'm also doing is
I'm on making YouTube videos and I talk about some
of this stuff. I talk about iconography, but also how
the traditional symbolism that we have in our liturgy and
our icons and scripture, how it actually connects to everyday life,
and especially how this is what I'm going to try
to show you tonight, that the Icon of the Nativity,
it's not just an image of a moment in history
when a young child was born, but it's actually an
image of reality. It's an image which shows us how
reality lays itself out for us. And so hopefully we'll
be able to go through the icon and I'll be
able to show you how profound our faith is and
how profound these images are. These images. Obviously, the problem
a lot with a lot of these images is that
we come to take them for granted. Obviously we've seen
them so much that they kind of go into the
background of our minds. But it's always good to go
back into them and let's say, reawaken our sensitivity to
see what's really going on in some of these images. Now,
I wanted to start with this just because this is
where we're going. Everybody knows it's November. We're going towards this,
We're going towards Is this this kind of crazy excess
of everything for the holidays, This this uh, this celebration
of the bells, the velvet, the gold and all of that,
and we're used to it. We see it happen every year.
But we, as Orthodox Christians, we have this fast here.
It's it's obviously quite a contrast as we're watching everybody
partying around us, that we have this fast. It's it's
I have to admit that it's a much harder fast
to follow than Lent because it's just a lot harder
because there's so much going on everybody celebrating. But I
think we can at least look at why would we
have a fast? What is it that we're preparing for?
Because that's the point of the fast, that's the point
of Lent, and that's also the point of this fast.
What is it that we're preparing for? What's the Why
is it such a big deal for this notion of
the Nativity or the incarnation? You know, we we uh,
we always have as Christians, most of us, we all
have this trope where we say like, what's the real
you know, we we have Christmas, we celebrate, we give gifts,
we have all that Santa, we have everything. We ask like,
what's the real reason for Christmas? And we all have
the answer, right, right, it's the birth of Christ, that's
the answer. But we need to go more into it.
What's why is it such a big deal? And in
the Icon of the Nativity we can see with our
eyes the way that the icon is made, why that's
such a big deal, how it shows us this. So
so I put in I put in one one of
the icons that I've carved, just so you can see
for those who haven't seen my work. But so everybody
knows the Icon of the Nativity. Does everybody understand what's happening.
Maybe I'll go through the elements of the icon just
so that people kind of understand what's going on first,
because it is a complicated icon for a feast. So
we have the Mother of God in the center, who's
lying down on a mat. She's resting after having given birth.
We have, of course Christ, the Christ Child, who's laying
down in the manger. Surrounding him is the ass and
the Ox. By the way, the ass and the ox
is one of the oldest elements of the Nativity. It
doesn't say in scripture that there's an ass and an
ox specifically, but it is one of the oldest elements
in the first images we have where we see Christ
in a manger, we see the ass and the ox.
There's some images from the third century where you just
see a manger with Christ and an ass and an
ox on each side. We'll get to why that's important.
It's very important. We have the three wise men who
are coming to encounter Christ. Here we have a shepherd
who is blowing his horns celebrating. At the top, we
have the three angels that are announcing the birth of Christ.
Here that you can see it in this one. Can
you see what it is? Everybody? See right? That's a
star and above the star is a glory. Different ways
of showing it, but it's a glory which shows us,
in a symbolic manner, the presence of God. Now down
below we have two scenes we have We'll start here.
We have the washing of the Christ Child and we
have Saint Joseph who is being tempted by a shepherd
slash devil. So those are the canonical images, the canonical
elements of the icon. Is there before I start explaining
some of the elements. Are there some things that you've
never seen or that you're surprised to hear of, Like
when I said, Joseph being tempted by a devil. I
saw a few people sneering in the audience. Is that possible?
Does everybody know that story? Okay? So in the in
the tradition, uh, there is, Uh, there is a story
which talks about it comes from the proto Evangelium of James,
which is the the book out of which most of
our traditions for for the Mother of God and for
the Nativity come from outside of the Bible. And in
that book you have this scene where Joseph is not
permitted to be there when when we're in the Mother
of God gives birth. Imagine, we're so used to our
modern way of thinking with the dad, you know, in
the hospital, with the with the doctor. But that is
not the traditional way that a woman would have given birth.
A woman would give birth with what's the word in English, midwives?
There you go, Sorry, my French is going to come back,
so with midwives. And so Joseph was told to leave
the place where Christ is born. And so then he's
mulling over in his mind and he's thinking like is
this really possible? Is this for real? So he knows
he's not the father, and so he's wondering, like, is
this the real deal? Is this really the birth from
a virgin? And it's this devil figure who is tempting
him and who's saying like, who's asking him questions and
one and getting him to wonder whether or not this
is actually possible. And then the midwives are the ones
who are here watching the Christ child. So those are
the basic elements ask for the ass and the ox.
That is also a very very ancient tradition. Also, the
other tradition, which quite old, is the fact that Christ
was born in a cave. Now that in scripture it
doesn't say that. The only thing it says in scripture
is that Christ was laid in a manger, which means
that Christ was laid in a food troth for animals.
That's what a manger is. Sometimes we forget a manger
is basically a food troth for animals. And so it
doesn't say that he was born in a stable or
born like we know we have these little images of
nativities with Christ in the little stable. But the tradition
from very early from the first century, we have in
Saint Justin Martyr talks about how Christ was born in
a cave Okay, So those are the basic elements of
the the icon, and the way they're laid out, first
of all, can help us understand something about iconography, which is,
icons are not snapshots. You know, They're not just someone
who would come on an event and just take a
picture of something that's going on, because all of these
events are happening at different times and different places. Right.
The wise men were in the east when they saw
the star, and when they arrived at the place where
Christ was, it was like a year later, several months later, okay,
and then here's the Mother of God giving birth. But
then here's Christ here, and then here's Christ here again
being washed. And so what the icon does is it
compresses things together, right, It takes these different elements of
the story and it brings them into one place where
you can see things in their meaning. You could say,
how all these elements in the story come together and
participate in the meaning. And so it can give us,
it can give us a different sense of what these
things mean and how they come together. So what you see,
for example, in the icon, you see it quite clearly.
You see these joining of these kind of you could say,
these wild opposites you have these angels up above, right,
you have this kind of demonic figure. There below you
have these wise men who are from very very far
away and who are probably an elite nobles in the West.
They were considered kings who say the three Wise Kings,
and so they're they're the elite, but they're also from
far away. And then you have these homely shepherds who
are just the guys next door who are participating in
this event. And so look at how the icon is
actually brought together. Right. The whole thing is like a bullseye, right,
it's this concentric, this constrict concentric structure. You have something
going on in the middle which brings together everything from
everything that's around it, and that already starts to tell
us a little bit of the mystery of what it
is that's happening on in that moment, What it is
that's going on. What is this Christ child? What is he?
What is he for us? And the first thing that
we can see is that he's bringing together all these opposites.
You could say something like he's gathering together, you know,
all of creation, all of everything, gathering it together into himself.
And once you start to see that, then you start
to understand also, when I told you about the ass
and the ox, this is a little bit more kind
of esoteric. But just bear with me. You'll see how
it makes sense. The ass and the ox relate to
Old Testament laws. So there were foods in the Old
Testament which people could eat today Jews call kosher food,
and there are some foods that people couldn't eat. There
were impure foods. Now the ox is a pure food
and the ass or the donkey is an impure food.
You're not allowed to eat donkeys. So because of that,
the donkey becomes becomes in the the symbolism an image
for us, actually most of us. I don't know if
are there any Jews here, maybe not, but for all
the all the nations, let's say, all those that aren't Jewish,
and you read in the Church Fathers, they talk about
this ass and this ox as the and there's a
law in the Old Testament which says you cannot yoke
an ass and an ox together if you're going to plow.
So it's like that's a very strange law for people,
you know, especially for kind of atheist types. They always
like that. They want to make fun of the Bible
they'll say, here's this crazy law which says that you
can't yoke an ass and an ox together. But what
it meant is exactly is what I told you, is
that you cannot bring together the outside and the inside.
You cannot join with the foreigners, you cannot mix the
pure and the impure. But Christ brings us a different
vision of the world, brings us a different reality, where
in fact he does. I always say Christ is the
only one who's allowed to break that law because he does,
in fact bring the ass and the ox together, and
he does it, and we see it happen in this icon,
and so the ass and the ox become this image
of how the Jews and the Gentiles are going to
join together, and the Church will be born out of
that union. And I'm not making this stuff up, by
the way you can read. I don't have the quotes,
but in the Church Fathers they explicitly talk about this symbolism. Now,
the other kind of let's say, strange element or important
element is the cave. So why does Christ have to
be born in a cave? One of the secrets to
kind of understanding why Christ has to be born in
a cave is if you look at the manger. So
look at the look at the manger. What does it
look like? Sorry, yes, that's exactly what. And so the
manger is is already uh tomb. And so this descent
into the cave, this, this, this image of Christ being
born in a cave is already showing us what the
whole story is about, what the whole story is about,
which is it is already this descent into death. And
the descent into death appears. You know, we symbolize the
imagery of the of the manger as as a tomb,
but the manger itself is already an image of that.
This idea of descending down into animality, descending down into
the place of animals, that is the state of the
fall itself. Right when Adam and Eve fell in the garden,
God gave them these garments of animal skins to cover them.
And so this idea of descending into the place of
the animal is this descent into death. And the early
Christians knew that very very well. They would actually create
images which would link all of those things together. A
good example here in the these are images taken from
the catacombs. So these are images taken from literally from
the graves of Christians. And so what do they represent
in the space of death? They represent something which is
akin to what we saw. That is these three images.
This is Can anybody guess what that image of is
of their Yeah, it's Noah's ark. It's very strange, Noah's ark.
But that's Noah's ark. You can tell because you see
he's got a bird and he's got this this giant
box floating in water. Who can guess what this one is? Yes, Jonah.
And then this one you can read. His name is written,
so it's not that hard. So there's Daniel in the
lines dead. So there are three images, three images from
the Old Testament which help us see what it is
that's going on, this descent into death, this descent into
a cave, this descent into the place of animals, into
into the animal existence, you could say, which is that
existence of death. And so the image of of of
of Christ, it's it's you know, and I and I
talk of that, and I feel like maybe I'm actually
ruining Christmas for you because because Chris, we celebrate and
it's fine, we should celebrate christas we should, but in
our icon we have a reminder of something which is
far more austere, something which is far more serious than
just this kind of celebration of the birth of a child.
There are other images of Christ, other icons of Christ
which happened underground, you would say, and we've got two
of them. One is this one. Everybody know what this is, right,
the baptism of Christ, and the other all show later.
The other is the anastasis, which is Christ descending into death.
Those two images happen underground, and those two images are
also images of Christ descending into death. So you have
this like repeated pattern from the Nativity of Christ descending
into death and then the baptism of Christ and the anastasis.
Here in this version of the anastasis of the of
the baptism, he's actually standing on the doors of death,
just like in the Icon of the Resurrection. So in
the Icon of the Resurrection, here's another one of my carvings,
if you want to know another one of the resurrections.
In the Icon of the Resurrection, you see Christ standing
on the doors of death. Why why, why is it?
I'm telling you that this is an image of reality.
This icon is actually a picture of how the world works.
Why is that so? Well? There there there there are
a few things this idea of the Christ child God
told Gabriel told Saint Gabriel told the Mother of God
to name her child Immanuel. And what does his annual me? Yes,
God with us or God in us? Right, So it
is it is both. This descent of Christ into the
cave is of course this descent of the origin of
the universe into the world. And in a way it's
like this, this this story obviously is a total scandal.
You can understand why people rejected it. It is a
crazy story. There's a crazy story to say that God
that the logos, that the divine logos which created the world,
would become a person, would enter into the world and
reveal himself in this specific moment you know in history,
and you think it is an insanely crazy story. But
at the same time, it's not a scandal because what
it showed showing us, it's showing us how reality actually works.
It's showing us the mystery that say Paul announced, Saint
Paul talked to us about what is this mystery of
the incarnation, and he says that Christ has revealed to
us the mystery that was hidden for all ages and
generation but is now revealed to his saints. And what
is this mystery? It is Christ in you, the hope
of glory. You know, we say as Orthodox Orthodox people,
and we repeat it all the time. We say God
became man so that man could become God. That is,
Christ is revealing us the manner in which the world
actually exists, everything in the world. And when I say
and when you say Christ in you, it's not just
Christ in you, but Christ in everything. Christ in the world.
God is hidden in the world, just like Christ is
born hidden in this world cave God is. Of course,
there are difference of levels here. We have to be careful.
I'm not saying that the whole world is the incarnation,
but the incarnation is showing us how God is hiding
in the world and is hiding behind phenomena. And in fact,
without without this divine spark or this child, this invisible
thing which is hidden inside all phenomena, the world doesn't exist.
And I'm saying this like, I'm saying this very technically.
I'm not saying it in a way that that is
just I'm not just spouting this off. The world is
actually the world is made of too much stuff. Everything
in the world scatters into details. Why is it that
this microphone, How is it that you say that it's
a microphone? Why don't you see all its parts with
out without seeing that it's one thing. There's something about
the world, the way the world works, which which makes
the world come together into unity. And that's for anything,
any object, anything in the world. Everything has multiple, multiple,
multiple parts, an indefinite infinite amount of parts. Why how
is it that we can say that that some things
exist and you hear like people kind of talking that,
people say that like it's all just a quantum flux, right,
It's all just flux. Nothing is actually real. If you
take the microphone, you could say this is this is
a wire, and it's a mesh of steel, and it's
black paint and it's white paint, and I could keep
going and keep going, keep going. I could describe the
microphone forever without ever saying that it's a microphone. How
is it that I can see that it is something?
And it's a mystery. We can't totally know exactly how
how it works. But what we do know is that
that is that is the that is the ontology that
we are living, and that is the world view that
the Orthodox Christian lives in. Saint Maximus the Confessor talks
about this explicitly. He talks about how hidden in the
world are these purposes, these hidden kernels that bring things together,
that make us, make us, actually make the world exist.
And so when we see Christ coming down into this
cave hidden in the world, it is an image of
how the world exists. And when we see Saint Joseph
there doubting and asking himself, is this is this possible?
Is this possible that someone can be born of a virgin?
What is he asking? He's asking a huge question. He's
he's asking the question. He's asking, how is it possible
for there for something to come out of nothing? How
is it possible for this union between the spiritual and
the physical to happen? How is it possible that we
that the world exists? Ultimately? That is what he's asking.
When we talk of the Mother of God, we use
certain terms which are very very strong to help us
understand this mystery. We say that that that Christ, uh
that she that she How do you say, how do
we say it that her womb contained that who him
who the world cannot contain, or that the cosmos cannot contain,
and so she contained in her womb that which could
not be contained. And it is and it is a pointing, right,
it is a pointing to the mystery right there, even
from the beginning of Scripture. It is linking us to
that beginning of Scripture, of this primordial, primordial earth. And
then you see the the the Word come down and
the Word of God which manifests the world out of
this primordial waters. Right this image is helping us see
what the mystery is about. And you see that ray
of light coming down, that star that comes down, it's
not it's not an arbitrary that they showed it, like
this ray of light which comes down and points and
points to this hidden kernel, this hidden reason why the
world exists, this hidden reason why things exist. So I
think what's important, I mean what's important is that there
are few things that are important. One is to understand
what it is that we're celebrating, and to to understand
especially that we we have We've been in a certain ways.
We've been we've been ruined by the modern world. We've
been told that as Christians we believe these things and
these things are arbitrary, that here it is you know,
there are these things that I believe, and they're somewhat arbitrary,
and here it is that I believe them. But that
is not the case. What we believe, our faith is real.
It is the things that we that it talks about,
the things that it manifests us. It manifests us really
the mysteries of how the world exists. Because the question
that that that Saint Joseph is asking himself, that's the
question that the atheist asks himself too, about the entire cosmos?
How is it possible? Why is there something rather than nothing?
And you can hear you can hear the physicians, the
physicist ask that today. It's like they say the Big Bang,
It's like why is there something? How did something come
out of nothing? Those questions, these those questions are being
asked today, and the incarnation is obviously have to be careful.
I'm not I'm not saying that this is all the
same thing, right. I'm trying to help you show that
the incarnation of Christ brings us into the very manner
in which the world exists and anchors us to a
way that we can understand, but not not just understand,
but participate in how the world exists, and so what
I would like to see suggest is that that is
what we are preparing for. And you know, it's not
totally arbitrary the fact that Christmas Nativity comes at around
the time of the solstice. You know, I don't think
that it's purposeful in the sense that a lot of
people think that somehow Christians just took over the pagan holidays.
Actually I don't think that that's how it happened. But
it isn't also arbitrary because in the time of the
solstice is what happens this secret mystery too. You can
imagine it's hard now because we live in the city
and we have lights and everything, but we can imagine
the sun going down and down and down and down,
and there's this darkness which is rising and rising and rising,
and you think, and you wonder, You think, how far
is it going to go? Is the sun going to vanish?
Is the sun going to go away? Is it going
to end? Is this going to finish? And then in
that that secret place, as the sun is at his
lowest point, in that secret place is where the sun
is born again. And we don't see it right away,
right it's a mystery. We don't see it until mid January.
We don't realize that the days are getting longer. And
again that image is the same image as what we're
seeing here right. Here's the light which comes down and
manifests itself in this secret place, in this hidden spark
which is there, and which will grow and start to
reveal itself. And then and then, you know, and we'll
go all the way into into Pasca to the final
kind of glorious manifestation of what was already started here,
was already intimated in the very story of the birth
of our Lord. So that is what I want to
encourage you today, mostly to kind of understand how important
it is. And also in the Orthodox face, we have
kept what I believe to be the most complete and
the most profound understanding and version of this in our hymns,
in our icons, in our liturgy, and in the writings
of the fathers. We have kept the most profound version
of this. And so we do have an answer to
you know, the crazy commodification of Christmas. And this is
our answer. And we know how deep it goes. It
goes to the bottom of the world. So thank you
very much. So I know that we said that if
anybody has questions, it can be about this, but it
could also be about anything else. If you want to
ask questions about iconography or about you know, this strange
fellow whose cars icons. Then the floor is open, yeah,
the underground. Yeah, the two strange disturbing figures. I will
tell you what they are. Let's put them up and
I'll tell you what they are. These guys. Okay, so
uh so that is the the Sea and the Jordan.
It's actually as their representations of of the waters. So
there's a there's a there's a psalm in which it
is said that the sea and the Jordan receded before
the Lord, that they that they kind of made way
for the Lord. And so this is the representation of
the Jordan and the Sea kind of making way for
their lord who's coming down. But there's something more very
interesting about this as well, is that the way in
which they're represented, they're represented as old gods. They're like
old river gods. These are these are Roman like Roman
river gods and river nymphs and whatever. So it's all
these kind of weird Roman gods. And so what happens
is that not only are the seas and the rivers
kind of making way for Christ. But the old gods
are making way for Christ as well, and they're kind
of getting out of the way to make way for Christ.
And you have this image. You know, we talk about baptism.
You know, you go in to baptism and then you
come out and you person, and you leave something down
in the waters. Right, you leave the the the let's say,
the chaotic aspect of yourself or the aspect of yourself
which was not could not be brought into union with Christ.
You leave it down in the waters. And that's in
terms of civilizations, it's the same. We talk about how
Orthodoxy baptizes cultures, right, but Orthodoxy went into Russia, baptised
is Russia, baptized Rome, baptized different cultures. But there are
some aspects of that culture which I got to stay
in the waters. And so this is a this is
a kind of very elaborate way to show all these
different things at the same time. Yep. Oh, so the
axe refers to Saint John the Baptist. Uh. There, Saint
John the Baptist when he's preaching out in the desert.
He says the acts. He talks about how people I
need to repent and need to be baptized. And he
says the axe is at the foot of the tree,
and he's saying, basically, the judgment is coming. You need
to repent because soon everything that doesn't bear fruit is
going to be cut off. So that's what that represents. Yeah, sure,
what came first? The Bible or icons? What's the oldest
iconist ever do for the Bible? Well, it depends what
you mean by icon. If by icon you just mean
an image. Yeah, well, for sure, for sure, the icons
of Christ as we know of, they came after the Bible.
But it's it's very difficult to it's very difficult to
know what was going on because because the church was
being persecuted. We do have some images here and there,
early early images, we don't have a lot, and so
it's difficult to know. We do know that already in
the second century there is a church that they found
in the city called Dua Europis, which was it was
a home church which was next to a synagogue. And
in that home church from the second century, there they
found two images of Christ, one of Christ healing the
paralytic and one of Christ pulling Saint Peter out of
the water, and so that's what we have. And don't
let historians tell you that that's the first Those are
the first icons. You know, there may be more some
for we have no idea, you know, it's just that
because the Church are persecuted, it's hard to uh, it's
hard to know, yeh. Yeah, it's just a question about
the baptismalnog da. So we do baptize obviously as infants
most but when you're the comms about you a chaotic
part of your existence behind, I have a hard time
recomfiling that when we speak of newborn infants or children
or well, let me ask you this. Do you exercise
the newborn before you baptize them? Yeah? You do? Yeah,
so so so even even even even when we're born,
we are still Saint Gregor of Nissa, we do talk
about children as having a certain innocence, that's true. But
Sant Gregor of Nissa talks about right there, talks about
even the child, even the infant who screams, for you know,
his mother's breast is already showing the passions. Uh, you
know that he'll have to deal with later in life.
And so it's like we already because we are living
in the body of death. Uh, the passions and the
kind of are are there very very early. Yeah, well,
the snakes underneath the door have more to do with
kind of these these you know in the Baptism prayers,
if you've heard the Baptist and prayers we talk about these,
they're great. They're my favorite prayers by the way, where
it's like we chase away the dragons that are in
the water, and we chase away the serpents that's hiding
at the bottom of the waters, and so we they're
this ancient idea of of of these chaotic beings, you know,
the Leviathan or sea monsters that hide in the waters,
and they kind of represent all of this, all of
these things that we exercise, all of these these these
fringe elements of ourselves that need to be cleansed, and
so that's what that is. So he's kind of pushing
down the serpents, yea, the sea serpents. All right, Well, everybody,
I really appreciate your attention. Thank you for listening to me,
and uh, and I wish you all the best on
this mentoring program. Sounds like a lot of fun. So
thanks Father Justin. If you enjoyed these videos and podcasts,
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