The Second

I visited Washington DC, the Capitol Building and the monuments associated with it.  The layout is perfect, with the Capitol at the highest point (Capitol Hill), facing East, and the memorials and monuments behind it to the West.  This layout precisely follows key aspects of spatial iconography in Church architecture.  The highest place in the building is where the Eucharist is prepared on the altar, facing East, where the rising sun is the icon of the Rising Light of the Son who is worshipped, the True Light.  Being steeped in this tradition, the layout in Washington DC required no explanation; it was obvious. Even more impressing on me was the cathedral like buildings and the statuary and iconographic paintings representing scenes of the founders, tributes to ideals--persons, or Hellenistic deities as avatars of virtues, of reason, of human achievement, of principles.  Once again, with my being steeped the Sacred iconography of the Church, I recognized immedia...

(This story was publish in God in the Dock , a collection of C. S. Lewis's writings)  XMAS AND CHRISTMAS A Lost Chapter from Herodotus   And beyond this there lies in the ocean, turned towards the west and north, the island of Niatirb which Hecataeus indeed declares to be the same size and shape as Sicily, but it is larger, though in calling it triangular a man would not miss the mark.   It is densely inhabited by men who wear clothes not very different from the other barbarians who occupy the north-western parts of Europe though they do not agree with them in language.   These islanders, surpassing all the men of whom we know in patience and endurance, use the following customs. In the middle of winter when fogs and rains most abound they have a great festival which they call Exmas, and for fifty days they prepare for it in the fashion I shall describe.  First of all, every citizen is obliged to send to each of his friends and relations a square piece o...