Wings of drifted snow, eyes of flame and a skeleton in the closet.

Having had our children early, wonder-husband (WH) and I have been prematurely excluded from that most emotional and enjoyable of events, the school nativity play. To overcome our withdrawal symptoms this year, we interrogated the offspring of relatives and friends to fill the void and garner some vicarious tear jerking to the (imagined) first, quivering lines of ‘Away in a manger’.

Having analysed the transcripts from several interrogations, WH and I can report that for those like our own offspring who never clutched at the stardom of virgin or her consort (who are the kids that get to be Mary and Joseph and what have their parents done to bag the roles?),  the angels are most coveted openings available and that among them, Gabriel of the drifted snowy wings, flaming eyes and a full four Basque nineteenth century verses of his own, the most coveted of all.

 

Wonderful flying buttresses!

We carried out parallel interrogations among the mothers; seasonal seamstresses who expressed a preference for, and some of whom exhaled with visible relief at having bagged for their progeny, a shepherd or a king …. a few rustic or regally coloured offcuts, something to carry (lamb or bling), a tea towel or paper crown; not too difficult to craft while quaffing the Bristol Cream and mince pies. Now when it came to Gabriel’s costumiers, we were in another league. Wings of drifted snow require engineering of equivalent visionary genius to Notre Dame’s flying buttresses with commensurate levels of stress. 

Hubert van Eyck - alter detail

To round off our investigations I did further research on the Angel Gabriel. Apparently ‘he’ is not a ‘he’ at all but is represented in numerous transcripts, icons and art as a woman …. ‘her wings of drifted snow, her eyes of flame etc etc’ …. Furthermore, she is not only a Christian messenger of the Annunciation and similar but also an important herald in the Islamic tradition, she who heralded in fact, to the prophet Mohammed the three defining aspects of Islam, Iman and Ihsan. … I need to now go and ponder how to break the news to my erstwhile friends in Saudi Arabia (see To buy and Abaya and In the twang of a G-string - Oct 2013) that Gabriel is a woman. With their patchy approach to gender inclusion, I am not sure they are going to be too pleased to hear from me again!!