Since so much of my time is spent with the Pre-Raphaelites, it’s only natural that I would be looking at Pre-Raphaelite Christmas pictures and poems at the moment. Christina Rossetti’s ‘A Christmas Carol‘, better known as ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ with musical settings by Gustav Holst and Harold Darke. I think I slightly prefer the latter.
The beautiful simplicity of the ‘bleak midwinter’ has made this carol a very popular choice for ‘the nation’s favourite’, but I think I actually prefer Rossetti’s poem ‘Christmas Eve’, which also has a stark, simple beauty which makes use of unexpected contrasts, culminating in a real sense of celebration of the imminent arrival of Christ.
Christmas hath a darkness
Brighter than the blazing noon,
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.
Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answering music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.
Rossetti wrote a number of other poems about Christmas, including ‘Sunday Before Advent’, ‘Advent‘ and ‘Advent Sunday’, and ‘Love Came Down at Christmas’ (set to music by several composers including Harold Darke again, and John Rutter, which I love) and also ‘Before the Paling of the Stars’, setting by Cecelia McDowall.
Around 1860, William Morris, the man who could do almost everything, wrote a Christmas carol (of course he did!), entitled ‘Masters in this Hall’. If you know anything about Morris, it won’t surprise you to hear it is very medieval, but set to an early 18th century French dance tune. Also unsurprisingly, it contains some hints of Morris’s political views, with a chorus that runs: ‘Nowell, nowell, nowell, nowell sing we loud!/ God today hath poor folk raised and cast a-down the proud.’
It’s not all poetry and music, though; Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted a beautiful oil of A Christmas Carol, in 1867, featuring a typically Rossettian medieval-looking lady with a lute. On the frame is inscribed the words: Here a maid, well-apparelled, sings a song of Christ’s birth with the tune of Balulalow: “Jesus Christus hodie Natus est de Virgine”. If you don’t know the traditional Christmas tune Balulalow, listen here.
This wasn’t Rossetti’s first Christmas painting, however; there is a watercolour with a similarly musical element from 1857-8, featuring Elizabeth Siddall and her remarkable hair. This was painted at a period of high medievalism for the Pre-Raphaelites, so it is unsurprising that this picture displays the highly-finished, decorated surfaces and fabrics of Pre-Raphaelite medievalism.
It seems likely that this painting inspired the Pre-Raphaelite poet Swinburne to write ‘A Christmas Carol‘, which as far as I know hasn’t been set to music. The poem opens with three women, two attending a queen and combing her hair; and the poem describes the women who tended Mary at the birth of Christ – which is odd; Mary is very much the Queen of Heaven in Swinburne’s poem, rather than the lowborn woman who gave birth in a stable. Nonetheless the poem makes a nice accompaniment to Rossetti’s painting.
Less specifically Christmassy, but still very festive, is Swinburne’s poem ‘A Roundel‘. He is a stronger poet here, I think: decorative, aesthetic, bringing the form of the poem, the shape of a Christmas decoration, and the emotions of the festive period together.
There are many more things I could include here, but I will finish with the magnificent Star of Bethlehem (1885-90) by Edward Burne-Jones. This is a huge, epic painting, with the Magi worshipping the Christ child while an angel holds the Star. It tells a part of the Christmas story whilst representing some of the best aspects of Pre-Raphaelite painting, from the landscape to every tiny symbolic detail. Yet it eschews obviously Christmassy cliches and colours, instead offering both complexity of detail and simplicity of emotion.
If you want to experience a full Pre-Raphaelite Christmas atmosphere, I recommend a visit to Wightwick Manor. Wishing you a very happy Christmas!
