Your Nativity, O Christ our God, has shone to the world the light of wisdom!
(Christmas Tropar,* fourth-century hymn)
Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One,
and the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One!
(Christmas Kontakion,* sixth-century hymn by Saint Roman the Melodist)
These Orthodox Christmas hymns articulate two themes of this complex icon: Light and Earth. Christ enlightens the world (the Earth) through his birth. The Theotokos, Mary, gave a veil of flesh to Christ, enrobing him with clay. The multi-scene icon is enacted on rugged hills called gorki, earthen landscape that represents our gradual ascent toward God. Always helped by the Holy Spirit, ascent is gradual: two steps forward then one backward, some steps jagged, some smooth. This is the path of human, clay-bound life seeking God in a fallen world.
In the bottom third of the icon we see Joseph, the husband of Mary, in troubled conversation with an old man; on the right we see servant girls washing the newborn Christ. Both scenes acknowledge Christ’s humanness. He had a real body that needed washing and a real family that had to struggle with doubt.
In the middle third of the icon, we see a cave with animals. This cave represents the darkness of the material world, which receives the Light of the Divine through the birth of Christ. Shepherds have climbed the mountain and can see the babe. These are natural, simple men whose daily contact with creation has purified them, enabling them to climb up high enough to see the babe.
On the left are the magi, whose vast learning and obedient faith have also allowed them to see and worship. In Christian understanding, there are three ways to learn of God: creation, scripture, and revelation. Both the simple and the wise of the world can learn enough about God to “see the babe”—understanding what they see is another matter altogether. In contrast to the climbing figures, the Theotokos stretches out, fully at rest.
Continuing up the mountains to the top third of the icon, the viewer sees a band of “darkness” juxtaposed against the earthly cave’s deeper darkness. This immaterial darkness is a sort of noetic cave, filled with angels rejoicing at Christ’s Light entering the physical world. At the very top of the icon, the dark mandorla with its progressively lighter bands represents the Trinity: the unknowable Father, the now-incarnate Son, and the ever-proceeding Spirit. Mystically, and mysteriously, Love reaches from this Triune God into all the world through the birth of Christ.