Last Sunday, my family and I attended a Christmas carol service at our local church, resplendent, as every year, with candlelight and seasonal goodwill. As well as the age-old carols that we all know and love (or at least tolerate fondly, after the decades of repetition), there were of course several apposite readings, and it is the one below, from Luke 2:1-5, that inspired the subject of today’s blog.

And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered… So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child.

This of course refers to the census at Bethlehem, and the scene was depicted wonderfully well (albeit set anachronistically and anatopistically in 16th century Flanders) in this 1566 oil painting by one of my favourite artists, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. As is usual with works by this Netherlandish Renaissance master, much pleasure is derived from viewing the piece up close and discovering the multitude of details.

We are looking down on a snow-covered village (and indeed this is one of the first examples of snowy landscape in Western art, the previous winter of 1565 having been, not uncoincidentally, one of the harshest on record). People are going about their daily business: clearing the snow, crossing the frozen pond, warming themselves around a fire. The children are throwing snowballs, skating, sledging, spinning tops. In the right hand foreground, we see a man with a large carpenter’s saw, leading an ox and an ass, on which rides a woman wrapped up tightly against the cold. These are of course none other than Joseph and Mary, who have come to Bethlehem to be enrolled in the universal census ordered by Emperor Augustus.

With a few deft brushstrokes Bruegel brilliantly captures village life, whilst subtly depicting the scene just prior to the nativity (since after registering, there was, of course, no room at the inn). I could spend ages glimpsing new details revealed in Bruegel’s works, and indeed have done on several occasions in various galleries of Europe, where I have usually been left to it, meeting my long-suffering family later in the gift shop! Funnily enough, this piece I have yet to actually see (it’s in Brussels’ Musée des Beaux Arts, which is still only “on the list”).