Black Madonna, Yeshua and Santa Clause.

Christians worldwide celebrated their biggest festival, very recently. That brought me to think about three most prominent ‘trademarks’ of modern day Christianity, the Jesus, the Madonna and the Santa Clause.

Interestingly, Jesus was neither ‘Jesus’ nor ‘Christ’.  His name was ‘Yeshua’ but the phonetic limitations of ‘Koine Greek,’ the original language of Old testament, corrupted his name to Jesus in successive attempts. ‘Isa’, as Jesus is known in Quran is also an Arabic phonetic corruption of ‘Yeshua’. Similarly Christ is also derived from Greek ‘Christos’ meaning ‘awaited’ or Awaited Messiah, or ‘mahdi’’ of Islam. Jesus is repeatedly called ‘Jesus of Nazereth ‘. Nazereth is where Jesus was born, and you said it was Bethlehem? Oh!? The Son of Joseph and Mary also had another four brothers. James, Joses, Judas and Simon, that made them 5 siblings.

Mary, the mother of Jesus is also known as Madonna, when depicted with baby Jesus in arms. In many places of the world, Madonna is portrayed as ‘black Madonna’; the statue is engraved out of either dark coloured, or completely black material. This colured depiction actually pleases the followers originating from one continent, as well as all dark coloured people around the globe as they see it as Jesus’ or the Church’s benediction, magnanimity in rising above the discrimination of colour or race.Before you sell your soul to this act of charity, just recall.  Joseph and Mary’s family was a ‘dark’ coloured Asian family. It is not till the west ‘hijacked’ the Christianity, that this family acquired the fair skin, golden or red locks and European features in which the family is depicted  today, like the ‘Christ the redeemer’ of Rio,  Brazil or elsewhere in most of the churches. The early church portraiture painted the first family of the faith, correctly, in shades of brown, and iconography carved the statues in darker materials, and not in the degrees of white in post-renaissance features and colours. Black Madonna's head was, and still is, draped in a modest chador, the very Asian custom of her age.

Santa, the cherubic white Nordic old man in red and white (Coca-Cola given pop sartorial culture) coloured robes, riding the reindeer pulled sleigh called Santa Clause was neither Cherubic, nor white Nordic , nor rode the sleigh nor wore the red gown  and didn’t even have the name Santa Clause. Saint Nicholas, a brown Asian again, was born in South Turkey in year 270 in the town called Demre. "Noel Baba", is how locals still revere him, and his church in the town still draws a lot of tourists. The Bishop was canonised immediately after his death as he is said to have restored to life three sons, who had been butchered by their father. There is another tale, a grim one, of his rescuing some girls on the point of being sold to slavery for lack of dowry. He brought a sack full of gold to their home and all was well. So this brings the gift ‘sack’ in the picture. O’Saint Nicholas, the girls continued to be auctioned and sold in Turkey, along with other commodities and animals, till 1908, why did your ‘sack’ run dry after just one rescue??

Wonder why Christmas is known as “Noel” in most of the French speaking world.