#and then the dream turned into a violent resident evil style horror story

[ilkkawhat]

the horror story comes true

[globalworship]

[Holy] Innocent’s Song + art

On this 4th Day of Christmas we remember the Holy Innocents slaughtered by the power-hungry and fearful Herod.

It’s the basis of this modern song, with lyrics like a fever dream of an all-too-real massacre of children.

This recording is from a fabulous album of a cappella Christmas songs (sacred and secular) from the UK choral tradition. Most of the songs are sung in a pub style by a sextet, but this short song is a solo.

Lyrics by Charles Stanley Causley, poet, teacher and broadcaster, born in 1917 in Cornwall. He served in the UK Royal Navy in World War II. https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/d0bd5fde-dc37-3455-84f7-2cad43c748bc

More on the history of the song below.

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Who’s that knocking on the window, Who’s that standing at the door, What are all those presents Lying on the kitchen floor?

Who is the smiling stranger With hair as white as gin, What is he doing with the children And who could have let him in?

Why has he rubies on his fingers, A cold, cold crown on his head, Why, when he caws his carol, Does the salty snow run red?

Why does he ferry my fireside As a spider on a thread, His fingers made of fuses And his tongue of gingerbread?

Why does the world before him Melt in a million suns, Why do his yellow, yearning eyes Burn like saffron buns?

Watch where he comes walking Out of the Christmas flame, Dancing, double‑talking:

Herod is his name.

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We are all horrified that the Savior’s glorious birth resulted in the brutal deaths of baby boys in Bethlehem. (For the record, there were likely no more than 20, given the population of Bethlehem at the time.) (R.T. France, The Gospel of Matthew, page 85)

As if the report of this event isn’t horrific enough, Matthew forces us to linger on it by quoting Jeremiah 31:15 and asserting that the killing of the Bethlehem babies fulfilled Jeremiah’s prophecy about the weeping and great mourning in Ramah. This turns out to be a brilliant strategy. By quoting Jeremiah 31:15, Matthew invites us to go back to Jeremiah 31:16–17 to hear the rest of the story: God will act to rescue and restore his people from the terrible situation. Matthew wants us to understand that the hope promised to the mothers who wept for their children taken to Babylon is the hope promised to the mothers in Bethlehem who lost their children—and to all who face horrendous evil and injustice.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/6-ways-not-to-preach-the-birth-of-jesus/

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This painting is called Scène du massacre des Innocents (“Scene of the massacre of the Innocents”), and it was painted by the largely overlooked Parisian painter, Léon Cogniet in 1824. Today it hangs in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes.If it’s not the greatest of Christmas paintings, it must be one of the most haunting and affecting. A terrified mother cowers in a darkened corner, muffling the cries of her small infant, while around her the chaos and horror of Herod’s slaughter of the children of Bethlehem rages....

At the birth of Jesus, the heavenly host of angels had promised peace on earth and goodwill to all. But in Herod’s slaughter of the infant boys of Bethlehem, we see not peace, but evil being unleashed.

At Christmas we celebrate our belief that the king of the universe has come into the world, to wage peace and justice, to bring love and kindness to all. But we want to forget that the birth of Christ also released a malignant force, the unbridled power of empire, the jealous strength of a threatened monarch, meted out upon the most vulnerable of all people.

http://mikefrost.net/greatest-christmas-painting-time/

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“We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

— Book of Common Prayer

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A Reflection from Fr. Kenneth Tanner:

Some people have a hard time connecting to the way Christmas is practiced because it’s all tinsel and light and merriment. But the real Christmas is also dangerous and dark, full of complex human drama and the vilest evil. When on the first Christmas divine humility and powerlessness and poverty are revealed as the foundation of all that exists, this revelation of God in the flesh threatens all human notions of power, all human leadership that rests on exertions of might. The Incarnation is warfare without carnal weapons. It is waged with love. God takes the form of a baby because divine helplessness is greater than any other force in the universe. Love never fails. Real Christmas was and remains political. It is not all peace and joy and candy canes. The conception and birth of Jesus—this helpless, now silent infant who in the beginning was the Word by whom the Father spoke all things into existence, the one who even in swaddling clothes holds all things, even—somehow—the wood of the manger, together—set a challenge to all other rulers and kingdoms, visible and invisible. All temporal rulers instinctively know they are bested by an eternal kingdom of others-directed, self-sacrificial love that does not seek its own, that does not keep a record of wrongs, that is not jealous, that seeks to serve rather than to be served. Love is stronger—somehow—than death. Herod knew the jig was up, that the age of self-seeking rulers was now exposed and that the game was over. Herod turned to murder to try to reimpose the old order, as have so many visible and invisible powers down the centuries since the Incarnation, since God took up permanent residence as a member of the human race in Jesus Christ. I appreciate the way this artist captures the horror real infants and real mothers faced in the aftermath of the real Christmas, the infamous slaughter of male Hebrew children in and around Bethlehem that we remember I. our worship on the fourth day of Christmas. Fleeting worldly powers desperate to hold on to a false power that is being defeated by divine humility lash out. They always do, for violence is their defeated way of maintaining strength. What they did not know is that in (eventually) killing Jesus Christ they reversed the permanence not only of their rule but of all their violent actions. These poor Hebrew children and all who suffer violence have in Jesus Christ a glorious way now to endure beyond suffering and death, to shine forever in the kingdom of their Father, while the kingdoms of this world and their violence await permanent, shameful expiration. A blessed Fourth Day of this great feast of the Incarnation to you and yours. Remember the Innocents. We have inherited a kingdom; we await a world without end.

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A modern icon of the Holy Innocents by Laurie Gudim https://www.episcopalcafe.com/feast-day-of-the-holy-innocents/ http://everydaymysteries.com/