Sunday 18th December

This being almost Christmas, I have been reflecting on Angels.  They are as old as religion, and maybe as old as God himself; they certainly feature in the lexicon of the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions.  I think that the original meaning was messenger, this would tally with the idea that God resided in heaven and would from time to time send his Angels to earth to communicate with mankind.  An Angel was supposed to have told Mary that she was carrying God’s son, but by now it seems that the Angels were more like Lieutenants in God’s Court than mere messengers, and as time has passed the idea of Angels, as individual characters, both good and bad has grown up around the whole idea of religion.  Maybe this is some sort of hang-back to both the Greek and Roman pantheon of major and minor Gods, as if we couldn’t just be satisfied with one and one God only, and we had to back this up with a boardroom of Angels and a whole army of Saints, popes and martyrs to boot.

In western Art, Angels have developed from the earliest wingless but halo-ed icons to the rennaisance paintings where we begin to see those white draped be-winged and usually female creations.  This is now the standard image and is instantly recognizable from posters of famous paintings to Christmas cards.  And we all, old and young know exactly what is meant by the word Angel, even if children sometimes confuse them with Fairies. Not that there is that much difference really.

So, how to reconcile that with the similarly common use of the word Angel as a term of love or endearment – ‘Just be an Angel and help me out’ or ‘A teenage Angel’ where the mixing of worship and lust starts to become worryingly obscured.

Yesterday I was walking along and was brought up short by the sight of an Angel in a T-shirt.  Not a real-life messenger from God I hasten to add, but a walking piece of post-modern irony.  She was in her early twenties and quite chubby, I would say a definite size eighteen, and had bright chestnut curly hair with big ear-rings, short white skirt and footless tights (hardly the best combination) and a luminous pink T-shirt emblazoned in silver with the single word ANGEL.   A vision further from that depicted in all those religious paintings down the ages could not be imagined.  Not that she was ugly or particularly unattractive or in any way unsavoury, it was just that she definitely wasn’t angelic looking.  But this just demonstrates how far and how quickly language can mutate.  Everyone knew exactly what the T-shirt was saying, and it couldn’t be further from the original meaning either.

So, amidst all the Angels in Christmas lights and on top of trees and made of silver foil and tinsel with cotton wool wings and plastic halos, a modern day Angel in a T-shirt doesn’t raise an eyebrow where only a few years ago such blasphemy would have been hounded out of town. A change for the better I think and I am sure that an internet search for the word Angel would throw up even more outrageous images than I would like to imagine.  A strange and wonderful world we are living in, is it not?

So, do be an Angel and share this with your friends.