CHRISTMAS GREETINGS
ANCIENTWORLDS FESTIVALS & CELEBRATIONS

The Cosmic Salon of Nyx in Corinth

the trios of Delos, Grand Temple of the Delians, Temple of Apollo

enjoying a glass of wine at the House of the Gilded Cupids in Pompeii

The Dreaming Chamber in Egypt

Saturnalia in Rome

Yule in Germania

Christmas 09 Greetings

from Night~Owl Charmides

Holiday card and verse from DIonysia

Brueghel's "Fall of Icarus"

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
--W.H. Auden