Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “How Nativity Scenes Were Born,” a look at the origins and evolution of the ubiquitous depiction of the first Christmas, with Vanessa R. Corcoran, advising dean and adjunct professor of history at Georgetown University and scholar of medieval and religious history.

The Christmas season brings forth an abundance of Nativity scenes, nearly all depicting the same thing: A small manger containing the baby Jesus and surrounded by his parents, shepherds, the three wise men, and an assortment of barnyard animals.

It’s a scene that Mary and Joseph actually might find unfamiliar. The truth is that its origins are not entirely biblical, and a fair amount of creative license played a role in its evolution into what we see displayed today. The first Nativity scene—a living one—did not appear until more than 1200 years after the birth of Christ, being the creation of St. Francis of Assisi. Many common motifs of the scenes, such as barnyard animals, did not show up until the middle ages.

Oh come all ye faithful—as well as those who aren’t—and learn the fascinating history of today’s manger scenes and creches from Professor Vanessa Corcoran, who has extensively studied how Mary and various saints were venerated over time.

Dr. Corcoran, who also has given excellent Profs and Pints talks on the Vatican, will examine in depth how our Christmas imagery and beliefs evolved away from what historically actually happened. She’ll describe how Francis of Assisi and church leaders got involved in the process, and how our image of the nativity was shaped by famous paintings and frescoes, including works by Giotto, Botticelli, and Leonardo da Vinci.

She’ll also look at debates over Nativity scenes and the politicization of them. The placement of Nativity scenes in public spaces like courthouses and at the National Christmas Tree display in front of the White House has led to a series of civic lawsuits regarding the separation of church and state and continues to be a matter of contention. Some churches have been placing cages around Jesus, Mary and Joseph as a call for immigrant justice, while others responded to the pandemic by having the Three Wise Men wear masks or carry vaccination cards.

You’ll get a sense of much our Christmas “traditions” actually are dynamic, with new being layered on top of old. It’s a talk that will be full of Christmas surprises. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Door: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A creche by the French potter Gérard Mosser. (Photo by Claude Truong-Ngoc / Wikimedia Commons.)

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Christmas Truce of 1914,” on an unauthorized outbreak of peace and goodwill in the midst of a horrific war, with Christopher Hamner, associate professor of history at George Mason University, scholar of soldiers’ experiences in combat, and author of Enduring Battle: American Soldiers in Three Wars, 1776-1945.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/dc-christmas-truce .]

It became clear by December 1914 that the First World War, which had been raging on the European continent for five months, stood little chance of ending any time soon. Soldiers had begun to dig into trenches along the Western Front, and the armies of Britain and France were just at the beginning of a brutal stalemate with German forces that would last for nearly four more years.

Then, as the Christmas holidays approached, something unanticipated happened. Soldiers who had been firing mercilessly at each other just days before suddenly began crossing no-man’s land to talk, exchange holiday wishes, and sing carols. A strange, spontaneous, informal peace broke out.

Come learn more about this Christmas Truce and the insights its story offers into the psychology of human beings at war with Dr. Christopher Hamner, who previously has given excellent talks on war memorials, World War I poetry, and African American involvement in World War II.

To set up the truce’s story he’ll describe how the long Western Front came to be, with the opposing armies desperately racing each other north in a series of failed outflanking maneuvers until they reached the North Sea.

You’ll learn how the unofficial Christmas truce began as shouted greetings in places where the trench lines were within earshot. It gradually blossomed into something much larger, with soldiers on both sides engaging in burial details, exchanging small gifts and amenities, kicking balls together, cutting one another’s hair, and trading news. The ceasefires were unplanned and unsanctioned, the result of foot soldiers’ tentative efforts to reach out to their counterparts across no man’s land.

Leaders on both sides saw the holiday truce very differently. To them, the idea that their troops might socialize casually with the enemy suggested a lack of aggressive spirit and enthusiasm for fighting. Later attempts to stage holiday truces fizzled out; in 1915, Allied leaders circulated orders before the Christmas season forbidding fraternization in the hopes of averting another such episode of peaceful mingling between sworn enemies.

The 1914 Christmas Truce would be the only such large-scale ceasefire of the war, but it was not, however, the only time that soldiers in the trenches attempted to exert some control over their miserable existence at the front. As the conflict dragged on, observers noted in other places the sprouting of a fragile system of cooperation between enemy forces. Known as the “live and let live system,” it featured delicate, informal arrangements in which soldiers refused to fire at their opponents, or found ways to obey the formal rules of the front lines while mitigating their own exposure to death.

Dr. Hamner will reconstruct some of the episodes of the truce using primary sources from December 1914. He’ll explore what the spontaneous holiday truces reveal about the complex emotions of frontline soldiers. (Door: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: An Arthur Cadwgan Michael depiction of the Christmas Truce of 1914 published in The Illustrated London News on January 9, 1915.

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Green Knight and Medieval Yule,” a look at the Arthurian holiday legend and pre-Christian belief in “green men,” with Larissa “Kat” Tracy, professor of medieval literature and author of several books on the Middle Ages.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/dc-medieval-yule .]

The fourteenth-century Arthurian tale Sir Gawain and the Green Knight captures the festive spirit of the Christmas season in a distinctly dramatic way, with the arrival at the court of King Arthur of a striking green visitor with holly branch in one hand and an ax in the other. Told in verse form, it’s a story full of references to holiday festivities, hunts, and romantic intrigue, and it’s rooted both in Christianity and pre-Christian ideas of green men with plant features.

Bring some added magic to your holiday season by coming to Penn Social for a talk that will immerse you in the strange tale of the Green Knight and the beliefs and symbols it draws upon.

Dr. Larissa Tracy, a medievalist who has extensively researched Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, will discuss how the poem set at Yuletide traces the pre-Christian calendar as Gawain waits a year and a day to face his Otherworldly opponent at the mysterious Green Chapel.

To provide broader cultural context, she’ll discuss how the image of the Green Knight has its roots in the Green Man, a pre-Christian figure that co-existed with Christianity—as seen in the dozens of examples carved into the stonework of Rosslyn Chapel, outside of Edinburgh, Scotland. Scholars have wondered at the seemingly contradictory presence of these images in a Christian site, but the Green Man is not at odds with medieval Christianity. It often figures as a facet of it—an embodiment of similar religious sentiments that intertwined over the centuries.

Whether you are a fan of Arthurian legends, enjoyed The Green Knight film released in 2020, or simply have an interest in how pagan nature beliefs live on in our culture, you’ll be glad you planted yourself down in the audience for this talk. Christmas trees and wreaths will wish they could be there. (Doors: $17, or $13 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A Green Man in the woodwork of England’s Lincoln Cathedral. Photo by Richard Croft / Creative Commons. (Green tint added.)

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Robert Frost’s Winter Poems,” an exploration of a beloved poet’s thoughts on the season, with Michael Manson, former lecturer on literature at American University and past president of the Robert Frost Society.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/hill-center-frost-poems .]

“Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.”

So begins “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” which ranks as one of the most popular American poems of the 20th century and helped cement Robert Frost's status as of one of our nation’s most beloved poets.

Come to the Hill Center on Capitol Hill as we approach the darkest evening of the year for a talk that will have you delighting in Frost and embracing the arrival of winter.

Winter challenges modern urban Americans less immediately than it did Frost, who owned several New England farms. Yet the questions Frost raised through the metaphor of winter remain vital. Are humans meant to live and thrive on this planet, or is existence some cruel joke? How do we explain human resilience, the ability to keep pushing through despite the odds? Is there some force above us, in life itself, or some stubbornness at the heart of being human? What does it mean to thrive?

Frost raised questions like these in his poetry without answering them. For him, the answers are to be found in the process of making. Whether we’re writing poems, keeping gardens, playing sports, building careers, or raising families, we are all turning chaos into order. In all pursuits, Frost said, “strongly spent is synonymous with kept,” and he is inspired by those times when humans spend their lives strongly and thus keep them.

Be on hand as Michael Manson, a veteran scholar of Frost, reads and discusses Frost's poems on winter and other subjects. He’ll cover some of Frost’s best-known poems—“Stopping by Woods,” “Desert Places,” “The Wood-Pile”—as well as lesser-known works such as “Afterflakes,” “Questioning Faces,” and “Good-bye and Keep Cold.” The experience will be magical, and you’ll end up with a different perspective on the season ahead. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.