Sculpture in the Botanical Garden
Buenos Aires Botanical Garden - Fri, 28 Dec 2018 - 5pm
We finished up our self-guided tour around Buenos Aires today in the city's botanical garden. I've got to say, I didn't find any of the flowers or trees interesting. I've frankly seen far better displays elsewhere, in signficantly smaller cities. But two of the sculptures in the park were interesting.
"Were you rasied by wolves?" As an English idiom it's a rhetorical question criticizing a person for crude manners or lacking an understanding of social norms. But it ancient culture it's part of the foundation myth of Rome. In the story the city's founders, twins Romulus and Remus, were abandoned as infants in the 7th century BCE and raised for a time by a wolf. This sculpture in the park is a reproduction of the Capitoline Wolf (Lupa Capitolina) from the 11th-12th century CE housed in a museum in Rome.
The second sculpture I found interesting also involves ancient Rome, this one a depiction of revelers celebrating the Saturnalia.
Saturnalia, for those who don't know, was a major festival in the Roman Empire celebrated in late December. It is believed that early Christians moved their holiday of Christmas, celebrating the birth of their saviour, from the springtime when biblical texts indicated he was born, to December to coincide with Saturnalia. Because their celebration would coincide with widespread civic celebrations it would not attract unwanted attention from the authorities.
This sculpture is meaningful to me because in virtually every way Christmas has become everything that Christian moralists hated about the Saturnalia. Like Saturnalia, Christmas has expanded from a single day religious observance to pretty much a full month of tacky and licentious revelry. The resemblence is more than parallels; it's a direct line. The tradition of gift-giving, among others, comes directly from a practice of Saturnalia. (There are direct lines of borrowing from other traditions, too, such as the Christmas tree.) The sculpture, showing revelers drunk stupid and falling over, is what Christmas looks too much like today. ...At least in the US.
Speaking of what Christmas is like in the US, it seems it is not like that here in Argentina. We've been in the country straight through Christmas, and we've seen only the tiniest fraction of holiday decorations here one sees virtually anywhere in the US. Feeling disintersted in Christmas in the US I feel like I'm the character Scrooge. "Bah, humbug!" Here it's normal.
We finished up our self-guided tour around Buenos Aires today in the city's botanical garden. I've got to say, I didn't find any of the flowers or trees interesting. I've frankly seen far better displays elsewhere, in signficantly smaller cities. But two of the sculptures in the park were interesting.
"Were you rasied by wolves?" As an English idiom it's a rhetorical question criticizing a person for crude manners or lacking an understanding of social norms. But it ancient culture it's part of the foundation myth of Rome. In the story the city's founders, twins Romulus and Remus, were abandoned as infants in the 7th century BCE and raised for a time by a wolf. This sculpture in the park is a reproduction of the Capitoline Wolf (Lupa Capitolina) from the 11th-12th century CE housed in a museum in Rome.
The second sculpture I found interesting also involves ancient Rome, this one a depiction of revelers celebrating the Saturnalia.
Saturnalia, for those who don't know, was a major festival in the Roman Empire celebrated in late December. It is believed that early Christians moved their holiday of Christmas, celebrating the birth of their saviour, from the springtime when biblical texts indicated he was born, to December to coincide with Saturnalia. Because their celebration would coincide with widespread civic celebrations it would not attract unwanted attention from the authorities.
This sculpture is meaningful to me because in virtually every way Christmas has become everything that Christian moralists hated about the Saturnalia. Like Saturnalia, Christmas has expanded from a single day religious observance to pretty much a full month of tacky and licentious revelry. The resemblence is more than parallels; it's a direct line. The tradition of gift-giving, among others, comes directly from a practice of Saturnalia. (There are direct lines of borrowing from other traditions, too, such as the Christmas tree.) The sculpture, showing revelers drunk stupid and falling over, is what Christmas looks too much like today. ...At least in the US.
Speaking of what Christmas is like in the US, it seems it is not like that here in Argentina. We've been in the country straight through Christmas, and we've seen only the tiniest fraction of holiday decorations here one sees virtually anywhere in the US. Feeling disintersted in Christmas in the US I feel like I'm the character Scrooge. "Bah, humbug!" Here it's normal.