Christmas is one of the major festivals of the Eastern Orthodox year. But for those familiar with the Western European Christmas, the traditional Eastern Orthodox icon of the Nativity of Jesus is likely to seem disappointing and somewhat gloomy in appearance. Here is an example — circa 1500 — from the Rostov-Suzdal School:
It has the usual elements:
The baby Jesus lies in a stylized cave, wrapped up in swaddling clothes and lying in a long manger box. Beside him are an ass and an ox, derived from Isaiah 1:3:
“The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.”
The “divine light” coming down from heaven in the top center of many such icons represents the Star of Bethlehem that guided the Magi.
Mary is lying on her pallet, with her face serious and turned away both from Joseph and the child Jesus. She looks rather unhappy about the whole affair, and that is typical of this icon type, whether Russian or Greek, though the “accepted” interpretation is that she is absorbed in pondering matters.
At lower left, we see the husband, Joseph, sitting in deep thought, often with his chin resting on his left hand. He too looks worried, and with reason. According to Russian folk tradition, the shaggily-dressed shepherd standing beside Joseph and talking to him is actually the Devil in disguise. He is trying to talk Joseph into doubting the virgin birth. And from the looks of this icon, Joseph seems in a mood to buy what the Devil is selling. This identification of the shepherd with the Devil is obviously not the case in all Nativity icons — not even in Russia
In the upper part of the icon are angels — who vary in number from example to example — announcing the birth to a shepherd or shepherds. On the left, we see in older icons the three Magi (“Wise Men”) arriving on their horses across the hills, though later icons often show them as having arrived at the manger. The Magi would actually have been astrologers. The Slavic text of Matthew calls them Volsvi, which relates to the modern Russian word volshebstvo, meaning “magic.”
Icons tend to ignore chronology, mixing a number of related scenes together, and that is what we often see in Nativity icons, with the angelic annunciation to the shepherds combined with the arrival of the Magi. We see another such “out of time” incident in the usual element of the midwife washing the Christ Child after his birth (she is known as Zelomi in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew). Her helper Salome is pouring the water for washing into the basin.
We know from the apocryphal story that Salome doubted the perpetual virginity of Mary (a dogma of Eastern Orthodoxy), and even tried to physically check Mary out with her hand to determine the truth. Salome was punished for her “scientific” research by the withering of her hand, but then, as these stories usually go, she repented and her hand was healed, as we read in the source of this tale, the Protoevangelion of James:
“And the midwife went in and said unto Mary: Order thyself, for there is no small contention arisen concerning thee. And Salome made trial and cried out and said: Woe unto mine iniquity and mine unbelief, because I have tempted the living God, and lo, my hand falleth away from me in fire. And she bowed her knees unto the Lord, saying: O God of my fathers, remember that I am the seed of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob: make me not a public example unto the children of Israel, but restore me unto the poor, for thou knowest, Lord, that in thy name did I perform my cures, and did receive my hire of thee. 3 And lo, an angel of the Lord appeared, saying unto her: Salome, Salome, the Lord hath hearkened to thee: bring thine hand near unto the young child and take him up, and there shall be unto thee salvation and joy.”
The unspoken moral to that story was obviously, “Don’t question what we tell you, and do not examine the evidence.” A lot of politicians today would favor that approach.
Here is another and similar example, with slight variations:
Though painted in the old manner, it has a later style inscription:
It reads (with missing letters added):
РОЖДЕСТВО ГОСПОДА ИСУСА ХРИСТА
ROZHDESTVO GOSPODA ISUSA KHRISTA
“Birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Рождество/Rozhdestvo is the spelling found in modern Russian, but in Church Slavic it is written without the d as Рожество/Rozhestvo. That is why on old icons of the Nativity, the Church Slavic inscriptions often read:
РОЖЕСТВО ГОСПОДА НАШЕГО ИСУСА ХРИСТА
ROZHESTVO GOSPODA NASHEGO ISUSA KHRISTA
“Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ”
Literally it is [THE] BIRTH (Rozhestvo) OF THE LORD (Gospoda) OF US (Nashego) JESUS CHRIST (Isusa Khrista). But of course in normal English we would translate it as “The Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Not the cheeriest of “Christmas” images, this traditional Nativity icon type was nonetheless the prevalent depiction of the birth of Christ in Greek and in Russian iconography. Fortunately, however, later Russian icon painting began to be influenced by the Western versions of the Nativity, and so there are many “late” (18th and 19th century) Russian icons showing a far more pleasant scene of Joseph and Mary with the infant Jesus, much like scenes one finds in Italian painting. It seems that even the Russians eventually found the traditional depiction too depressing to allow it to be the only type representing the Nativity.
As a sidelight, it is worth mentioning that the stories of the birth of Jesus found in Matthew and Luke (the other two gospels have no birth stories) differ significantly from one another, and are virtually incompatible on close examination. Even the genealogies given in those two writings have irreconcilable differences. Depictions of the Nativity, whether in Eastern Orthodoxy or Western Christianity, generally combine various elements of each story to make a “unified” account that is not what one actually finds in the original texts. That artificially unified account is the common matter of traditional school and church “Christmas plays.” And of course both Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Christianity mixed in apocryphal details as well, though that tendency faded out in groups allied with the rise of Protestantism.
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ICONS AND THEIR INTERPRETATION 