A Night Like Any Other

This year I am participating in an art show entitled Alternativity at The Compass Gallery in Provo, Utah. This show is focused on expanding the expected aesthetic of Christmas. I chose to create a painting of the Nativity story, but I wanted to do it in a unique way.

I did this through several elements.

1. I chose to create this painting with cut paper elements. I painted small details and then cut them out and pasted them into the scene. If you’ve seen my The House that Baba Yaga Built painting, I intended this to be similar.

2. I wanted to be historically accurate to the best of my ability.

   1. All the vegetation pictured grew in Bethlehem at the time of The Savior’s birth. Date Palms, Pomegranates, Prickly Pear Cacti, and Blue Lupine dot the landscape. A wild pea vine climbs the clay walls of the house.

   2. Many Nativity scenes picture the Holy Family in a little wooden lean-to. However, my research indicated that the Inn has been mistranslated and was actually referring to a guest room in a home and that the stable was actually likely a connected room for the family’s animals — a way to share warmth. Many families would likely not have been able to afford a separate barn. Additionally, wood would have been very expensive. It is far more likely that stone would be used — including for the manger (which I have painted to be stone). I have painted Mary, Jesus, and Joseph in a room connected to the home of a relative.

   3. I included a sheep and a goat as those are the animals most likely to have been part of a family’s livestock rather than donkeys or cows.

   4. Mary, Jesus, and Joseph have been painted with more historically accurate skin tones.

3. I wanted to include tiny details that would deepen the reality of the scene.

   1. I included a little oil lamp modeled after ancient relics from biblical times.

   2. I included other pottery also modeled after ancient relics from the region.

   3. I included a woven rug that looks like embroidery and weaving from ancient Palestine.

Something that struck me as I worked on this piece was how common it all would have felt. The course of the entire world was about to change, and yet, all the people in the city (in the world) were going about their day-to-day lives. Jesus wasn’t born in some holy temple set apart for the Messiah — he was born in an average town in an average home on an average night. Yet, despite the excess of the commonplace, The Savior of the WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD was born and everything changed. Still, how many people, neighbors, friends, merchants continued to sleep and eat and live not realizing the gravity of what took place? And how many of us continue to sleep and eat and live and take for granted the gravity of The Savior?

But, that is how our world was created — the mundane is the vehicle through which all holy and beautiful and uncommon things take place. Every time we step off our daily route to lift another person who is drowning in the difficulties of mortal toil, we create and find the same uncommon holiness of The Savior’s birth and life.