Rector’s Reflections
Monday 16th December 2024
In the Bleak Midwinter: A Victorian View of Christmas
We have now reached the third verse of Christina Rossetti’s carol:
“Enough for him whom cherubim worship night and day,
A breast full of milk and a manger full of hay:
Enough for him, whom angels fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.”
In this verse, Christina high lights two particular aspects of the life of Jesus, both of which resonated with the values of Victorian Christianity.
The first is the importance of Jesus’ humanity. Christina emphasises that that Jesus is a real human baby, and real human babies drink milk from their mother’s breast. Real human babies also lie in a cot of some sort, and in Jesus’ case, this cot is pictured as a manger full of hay. In other words, the birth of Jesus is about God coming down to earth and taking human flesh, being born as a real human being, into a real human family. Jesus truly is human, as well as being divine.
Societies and cultures have always found it hard to do full justice to both aspects of Jesus’s nature: to emphasise that he was divine and human. Cultures tend to emphasise one nature at the expense of the other. Some cultures proclaim the humanity of Christ, and downplay his divine nature. Other cultures tend to downplay the humanity of Christ, and focus instead on his divinity. I think Victorian Christianity was generally stronger on Jesus’ humanity than on his divinity. I wonder why this was? Perhaps it was because it was generally accepted in Victorian society that Jesus was God, so there was little danger that his divinity would be forgotten. However, there was every danger that people would forget that Jesus was also a real human being, a human being just like the rest of us, with the exception that while Jesus knew temptation, he did not know sin. So Christina takes the opportunity to remind her readers that Jesus really was a human being, by picturing the baby Jesus suckling his mother’s breast.
The second element in this verse is its emphasis on the value of Jesus’ humility. One might have expected Jesus to have been born into a world of splendour and privilege. He wasn’t. The Lord of the Universe, “whom angels fall down before”, was born into the simplest of surroundings: a manger full of hay, surrounded by an ox, ass and camel.
Victorian Christianity often placed a high value on humility. Why was this so? In part it was a reflection of living in a society where class distinctions mattered. Middle and Upper Class Christians could be expected to value the “humility” of those beneath them, because such “humility” showed that the underlings knew their place. They weren’t getting above themselves. But there was more to it than that. In such a class conscious society, an act of humility performed by someone who enjoyed high social status was a noteworthy act indeed. It showed the power of traditional Christian values to challenge the prevailing values of secular society. Perhaps Christina wished to make a point to the proud and well-to-do Christians of her own day. If “a breast full of milk” and a “manger full of hay” sufficed for Jesus, why do we insist on having so much more?
Indeed, do we ever know the meaning of the word “enough”? We tend to wish to accumulate more and more, and are rarely content with what we already have.
So Christina is getting us to think about Jesus’ humanity and about his humility. It was “enough” for him to be born in a humble stable, surrounded by the bare minimum of stuff. But he had what he needed: food and shelter, and his mother’s love.
We tend to surround ourselves with so much stuff – much more than we need. What might be “enough” for us? The answer we give to this question will depend on our particular circumstances. But it is a question which is worth asking.