Sunday

This is Décoration du sapin de Noēl, or Decorating the Christmas Tree, by Marcel Rieder, painted in 1898.

I mean, yes, there are better paintings in the world, but it’s too early (or late) for an Annunciation and anyway I had no choice because it’s December 1st and therefore TREE DAY.

Besides, it’s a charming painting of a domestic interior. I love how she’s holding a lamp to see what she’s doing, and I love its warm pink glow, and the softness of the light in the painting generally. I love that it’s the night time, which suggests the children are finally in bed and she’s finally got time to get the ornaments down and festoon the little tree, maybe as a surprise for them in the morning.

Or maybe I’m over-identifying. Maybe she lives alone with her dog and has just come back from work and is pleasing only herself - that works too. Or maybe she’s slightly eccentric and lives with her pet goat (I am not at all convinced the animal at her feet is a dog) and they’re just hanging out companionably, having a lovely time.

Whichever it is, the painting perfectly captures the joy of being inside in the warmth and golden light when it’s dark and cold outside, and the joy of making something celebratory and beautiful that lights up the winter nights, and also I think the joy of contented solitude. You can tell by looking at her that she’s taking her time decorating the tree, slightly lost in the moment and taking pleasure in it. I love that she’s laid out the ornaments on the table so she can properly see what she’s got.

I wish us all this degree of Tree Day serenity and contentment. Also tangle-free lights.

Marcel Rieder was from Alsace, near the French border with Germany. Christmas has pagan antecedents but the Germans really invented Christmas as we know it; Queen Victoria, under whose reign Christmas really became Christmas here in the UK, had a German husband who imported his country’s traditions.

Charles Dickens, often credited with the invention of Christmas, really re-invented it by making its significance crystal clear. In A Christmas Carol (1843), Scrooge’s initial humbuggery —

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.

— and eventual transformation encapsulate the incandescent spirit of Christmas. Whereas before ‘darkness was cheap, and Scrooge liked it,’ now he is reborn through love and empathy; he embraces joy and light, he laughs, he becomes happy and beloved. (‘I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach’).

He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—could give him so much happiness.

I really recommend reading or re-reading A Christmas Carol at this time of year. It’s only a short novella, it’s a page-turner, it will warm the cockles of even the wintriest and most cynical heart, and it will make you tearfully in the mood. As for the goose, when it arrives! One of the great descriptions of food in literature.

PS The Old Vic’s production would be a real treat.

I’ll be back in a couple of days with my own thoughts on tree (and house) decoration. Meanwhile thank you for stopping by! These monthly picture posts are free to read. They alternate with my food posts, which are also free. For everything else, you need a paid subscription, so do consider that if you’d like to. If you’d like a sampler first, there’s one here.

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