This is an excerpt from Island Diary written by Islandman, December 20th 1949, The Orkney Herald.

The literature and music of Christmas are deep-meadowed and spacious domains that border on each other. It is only natural, of course, that no other time of the year, not even the shivering waves of Spring, has inspired such great art.

It begins with the Gospel account of the Nativity, which is prose at its most limpid and evocative.

The Christmas lyrics of medieval times have an unrivalled purity and tenderness

“He came all so still

There his moder was,

As dew in Aprille

That falleth on the grass.”

…And what of this vision of Edwin Muir, the Orkney-born poet:

“All that had waited for his birth

Were round him then in dusty night.

The creatures of the swarming earth,

The souls and angels in the height.”

Parallel with this literary outburst of praise – expressing the feelings of all mankind at the miraculous deliverance of Christmas-tide – there is the great wealth of Christmas music, of which the lovely carols are the most familiar, and Handel’s ‘Messiah’ the apex; and, in visual art, those thousands of paintings in which artists have paid sincere tribute to the Virgin Mother and the divine child.

The Roofless Stable

Indeed it was no human inspiration that set the immemorial action of the nativity in a cow-shed open to the stars. Men expected the Messiah to be born in a palace, for was it not prophesised that he was to be a King? But in utter poverty and humility the event took place, and it is the humble and the simple in all ages who have understood it best.

That is perhaps why the message of Christmas, though sorely needed, is a little obscured today. We cram our stomachs with rich food and set our brains reeling with wine, and we quiet uneasy consciences with unnecessary gifts.

Surely there is a simpler way of showing our thankfulness.

ISLANDMAN

The Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown wrote as Islandman,