This Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent, and time for me to get going on printing my Christmas cards and start sending them out early for a change. So here is this year’s card, complete with cover graphic and message inside. The graphic is a Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Sign, with the description and explanation below.
I’m sending this early to all here at Coming Home to help keep this blessed and holy season in perspective. Here’s to an Advent of fruitful spiritual introspection followed by a Christmas filled with the love of those most dear to us.
“And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans–and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused–and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself.”
~Sigrid Undset
The Hex Sign
Double Trinity Tulips
The stylized tulip with its three petals is a dominate feature in Pennsylvania Dutch folk art. It is referred to as the Trinity Tulip and it symbolizes the Trinity as well as faith, hope and charity. The heart in this sign (as well as other Pennsylvania German folk art) is not the heart of sentimental “Victorian” valentines. Rather, it is religious in its representation of the heart of God, the source of all love and hope for a future life. The colors in this heart are used to give them additional meaning. Red symbolizes strong emotion and blue is used to indicate strength, especially spiritual strength. The white background symbolizes purity and the solid black circle represents unity in Christ.
Beautiful! Thank you! BTW… Sigrid Undeset is one of my favorite authors… Being Nowegian I love her historical novels of Norway before the reformation… they are beautifully Catholic! Have a blessed Advent and Christmas!
Susan,
I love her too. Regina gave me Kristin Lavransdatter for Christmas last year and I haven’t read the series yet. I fully intend to do so during Christmas week this year.
God Bless.
Dr. Nadal, you might find the Master of Hestviken also very very good because the main protangonist is a young man and therefore may be easier to relate to (as you are a man!).
Besides Kristin Lavransdatter, Gunnar’s Daughter is also very good.
She is tied as my all-time fav author with a few others!
MC,
Thanks for the book referral. It’s now on my Christmas wish list. The beauty of literature such as Undset’s, or that of Thomas Hardy is that the stories are so well told, so focussed on the universal human condition, that men come to understand women through the lives of the protagonists (and vice-versa).
I’ve often said that the greatest psychologists have been the best of the novelists, poets, and playwrights. They really get it.
@Dr. N
“…that men come to understand women through the lives of the protagonists (and vice-versa).”
Absolutely!
I just thought a man might like Master of Hestviken because it is a story about a man who does something very wrong and in the end is redeemed. A message we can all use.
MC,
Amen!