Do not free a camel of the burden
of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.- Gilbert K. Chesterton
Ok, so camels and the Christmas
story embeds the ideology of a message being carried across many lands. In 1223, St. Francis persuaded an emperor to
provide for poor animals at Christmas time, because, he said, and we do not
know why, for sure, that camels were at the birth of Christ. He made the first
live nativity scene. Middle Ages
promoted the camel story into their paintings and the camel is forever embedded
in our stories of Christmas. Camels
weigh heavily in the Bible stories. But,
and this is news to me, carbon dating has found that there were no camels in
the area at this time. Camels came, and
were used as beasts of burdens, much later.
This does not mean that the wise men did not ride them because they
were, after all, the song says, 'from afar'.
Riding a camel puts the riders
higher than others. This is symbolizing
that those who rode camels were of higher esteem. As well, they were priced high for trade and
carrying and became the sign of wealth. Most tribes would not eat camel
meat. Their hides made warmer
cloaks. They were, however only used as
clothing for lesser poor people as they were seen as unclean, work
animals. Radio carbon testing, or not,
they did find much use during the finding and use of copper for trade. They were hardy in the desert environment and
did not take much care.
Nonetheless, the camels hold a
place in the nativity today. And, I
chose to do one because... because.. well, just because I can. Perhaps the
camel of mine is stunned-looking because it is wondering how it got there. It was a test in shading to get the simple
shapes of the camel to become camel-like.
It was easy to do once I got the idea of some shading down.
©Carol Desjarlais 12.13.19
No comments:
Post a Comment