Nativity Scenes #1

It's the time of year when nativity scenes appear.  

A few days ago, we attended the unveiling of la Crèche at L'église de la Madeleine, not far from our apartment.

We arrived early to ensure a good seat.  The Crèche was located at the front of the church.  Here is a photo.

Jean-Claude assumed the Crèche was hidden under the white paper and would be revealed.  

Marie-Chantal read a brochure about the Crèche and learned that the white paper was the Crèche.  The priest announced that, although the evening's annual event was entitled "The Unveiling of the Creche," this year would be different since the paper veil itself was the creche, and therefore, the "unveiling" meant revealing the hidden symbolism of this year's manger scene.

The Curé of the Madeleine conducted a brief service with hymns and a reading.  During the service, the artists, Pascale and Damien Peyret, spoke about their creation.  They explained that it was difficult to come up with an innovative manger scene when so many magnificent creches have already been designed over the past several centuries.  They wanted to do something new and original that would draw the viewer's eye up toward the bright image of the star and then down again to the image of the infant Jesus.  Since they often use projectors and photographs in their artwork, they did the same thing when creating the creche.   

The Crèche is an artistic interpretation of the nativity, titled Une Étoile Dansante, or "A Dancing Star".  The artwork's style is Baroque, with the cascading white paper symbolizing the billowing clouds often seen in Baroque works.  The projected images are from Baroque paintings depicting the Nativity.  One of the projections showed different Baroque images, like the one below (possibly Joseph).

The title of the work, Une Étoile Dansante, refers to the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche:

"[O]ne must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."  From Thus spoke Zarathustra, Walter Kaufmann transl.      

Here, the birth of the dancing star equates to the birth of Jesus.  The underlying meaning of the scene, taken from Neitzsche's quote, has to do with the chaos and uncertainty of everyday life which becomes splendidly clear in the bright light of the big star that announces Jesus's birth.  We all walk in shadows, explained the priest, but the birth of Jesus brings light into our world.

While the Crèche was out of the ordinary, we were happy to attend the event.

During and after the service, we were fortunate to hear the Madeleine's magnificent organ.  

You can hear the organ by clicking on the video below.

While visiting the church, we spotted a memorial to the late French singing idol Johnny Hallyday.  It was the second anniversary of his death and his funeral at the Madeleine.   Hallyday, known as the French Elvis, is adored in France still.  Our friend Jean-Charles explained that Hallyday is so revered that some people refer to him as Saint Johnny.  (In fact, Hallyday was very religious.)  

Thanks for visiting with us L'église de la Madeleine, also known as the Church of Saint Johnny.