This year’s Australian Christmas stamp has just been issued, and bears the first-day postmark of our suburb of Merrylands, and features the scene of three angels, in psychedelic costumes, adoring mother and child. Mary in her royal robes sits enthroned, and Jesus, wearing little buddha-pants, looks nonchalant and thoroughly bored. It’s a pity at all levels. And I doubt that any of those depicted in the scene would have been terribly thrilled at the result.

The first Christmas stamp that I can remember was the five-penny issued 1964, of a young girl peering into the manger-scene on that very first Christmas. Trying to put nostalgia aside, for that can be a misleading judgement, the art appeals at many levels. The wonder of what happened on that first Christmas night. The relevance to our day and age. And a child’s heart that fills with joy in looking on something wonderful, and on Someone wonderful.

If our modern art speaks for our age, our generation has grown bored with Christmas; at least with that dimension that has to do with the manger. But our modern artists would do well to reread the original script, and not to simply paint by the numbers of a disillusioned age. For there they would read that a passionate Father, sent his passionate Son, to fill by his passionate Spirit, our jaded hearts with life and purpose and love. And may that holy wonder stamp its postmark on our lives this season.