CHRISTMAS SNAPSHOTS!
Members of Snappersquad share their favourite Christmas pictures, compiled by
Left, Santa’s House at the Spode Factory, by Eddie Orpe.
Left, Brown Edge Infants School nativity about 1964/5, submitted by Sentinel photographer.
Submitted by Snappersquad member.
Left, Christmas revellers in Burslem, by James Rogers
Jon Kelso: “The kids decided to dress me like a Christmas tree. Taken around 1995.”
Right, submitted by Snappersquad member.
Left, Jon Kelso: The kids have put the mince pie and milk out. Spirits are high with excitement. Taken around 2001.
Right, Trentham Gardens’ Christmas display, taken on an iphone 6 by Linda
Tams.
Taken by David Steele.
Left, Tim Mangan: “This is Christmas in our council house c.1960. My first camera, a Zenith with a flashbulb attachment. My father, his brother and three of my siblings. Poor times, and we always celebrated Christmas Eve, this being the Irish tradition.”
I MISSED them when we went for a walk towards the Mount. They were usually in a field by the Ashbourne road and would appear and enjoy taking a carrot or an apple. The most eager of them would push his head forward to get at the treat.
This piece is an onolatry – a worship of donkeys. I begin from my own experience with them riding on the beach at Rhyl. I do not know how well the donkeys would have been treated.
I suspect the quality of care was variable. Then there was the man I saw giving donkey rides in the Tuileries Garden in Paris one November day in 1985. I have a picture of him looking as bored and melancholic as his charges as he leads them home.
Then the donkeys of literature. Robert Louis Stevenson travelling companion in the Cevennes of southern France with the stubborn Modestine, the uncomplaining beast ridden by Sancho Panza in “Don Quixote” and the melancholic Eeyore in the “Winnie the Pooh”. And not forgetting Betsy Trotwood in “David Copperfield”, who was obsessed by them or Bottom in “Midsummer Night’s Dream who was turned into one.
The donkey features more than any other animal in the Bible.
As an allegory it is reliable, tenacious a bearer of heavy burdens and a symbol of labour and honest toil. The donkey also is given a voice and is the only animal apart from the snake that speaks in the Bible.
In the New Testament Christ rode a donkey through the city of Jerusalem. This donkey ride had been prophesied for hundreds of years before the actual event. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass” (Zechariah 9:9).
But as it is close to Christmas there is its role in the early life of Christ. When the Wise Men came in search of Jesus, they went to King Herod to ask where to find the newborn “King of the Jews”. Herod became fearful that the child would threaten his throne, and sought to kill him Herod initiated the Massacre of the Innocents in hopes of killing the baby Jesus, but an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and warned him to take Jesus and his mother into Egypt. So Jesus with Joseph and Mary usually portrayed on a donkey made their escape. They are refugees fleeing conflict an image that bridges the ages.
The scene was one frequently portrayed in art from the Middle Ages onwards. A good example can be seen in the 14th century Giotto frieze in the Basilica in Assisi on the Flight into Egypt. The weary donkey is urged on by angels to complete the journey with his precious cargo.