Word: manger
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...nearly 20 centuries. Sometimes it is to make the Holy Family more believable, often it is to make events even more miraculous. Many of the inventions of art and literature are so ingrained that people regard them as part of Holy Writ. The beasts that appear at the manger, for instance, are not mentioned in the Bible. Neither is the number of the Magi. The names Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar and the legend that Balthasar was black were popularized in the 8th century. Partly to make it easier for Catholics to believe in Mary's lifelong virginity, early church...
...singing of Christmas music in public schools, not because it is too religious (Florey's view) but because it is not religious enough. Such music used under secular auspices, except formal music classes, Thompson feels, "debases" and "perverts" the religious significance of Christmas. Why mix Away in a Manger with Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"? Thompson asks...
...have to listen carefully to get the Jesus symbolism, but it's there. "Ave Maria" is a highly veiled reference to Mary. "The Day That Love Began" refers to a manger in Bethlehem that sounds suspiciously like the one Jesus rented for his debut. And there are angels doing background vocals like so many divine Pips. Wonder's own cuts at the beginning and end are good. The rest of the album sucks...
...wise men wander into a manger, but it's the wrong one--no haloed Virgin Mary greets them in the straw; Terry Jones's familiar crone voice--a Python staple from "Penguin on the Telly" on down--bursts any reverential bubble, and we're back in the begrimed world of most Monty Python comedies...
That's the way things go in Monty Python's Life of Brian. The film is a send-up biblical epic recounting the biography of a chap born in the manger down the alley from the one people sing about each Christmas. Brian (Graham Chapman) is just a regular guy. He has a domineering mother, basically cowardly nature and no messianic complex whatever. But circumstances force him into contact with, among others, a lisping Pilate, an underground revolutionary group that spends more time in ideological debate than in overthrowing the Romans, and all sorts of people who think...