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Racists are boiling their piss about Mary looking too Muslim on the new Christmas stamps

It’s almost December, which means it’s time for a bunch of racist shitheads to start getting mad about Jesus and his family being depicted accurately. Because, you know, they were brown. As are most people born in Bethlehem, which now lies squarely within the West Bank, Palestine, about six miles south of Jerusalem.

As part of this year’s attack on Christmas, the bigots are getting het up about the Royal Mail’s new stamps. More specifically, they’re all hot and bothered about a depiction of the Madonna and Child, which the internet’s biggest tools reckon look a wee bit too Muslim, if you ask them. Not that anyone actually asked them, mind.

I really like this Christmas stamp, it’s nice

This is the stamp in question. It’s quite lovely, apart from that weird white prick in the top right. Unfortunately, no matter how nice you make something, there’s always some jerk lining up to have a go:

That’s definitely an attempt to be those most Muslim Christmas card ever.

Brown mother, brown child, headscarf = Muslim, obviously. Also, it’s a bloody stamp, but whatever. Then there’s whatever the fuck’s going on here:

Half moon above brown marys [sic] head mean anything???

Yes, you’ve rooted out the grand conspiracy. Halos actually look like crescent moons if you put someone’s head in front of them. We’re starting up a petition to remove all halos from Christian iconography immediately.

WE’RE DEFINITELY BOTHERED ABOUT THE PINK

Next there’s this prick, who would also really like to see Muhammad depicted on a stamp for definitely non-racist reasons:

In the West Mary and Jesus are traditionally depicted in a certain way and to depart from that tradition here is clearly a political decision meant to irritate people the government dislikes.

They’re responding to this tweet, by the way, which points out that:

Claiming you “fixed” the image on the left [Brown Jesus] by making Mary and Jesus whiter is just nakedly racist.

Here’s the White Mary (TM) from the ‘fixed’ image and accompanying tweet. Note, along with the white skin tone and blonde hair, they’ve also made Mary’s clothes blue. Similarly, she’s now got a smile slapped on her face, because why stop at racism when you could also do some misogyny.

As a side note, they also seem to have replaced the king’s silhouette with that of Elvis Presley. I don’t really have anything pithy to say about that. It’s just really quite fucking weird.

Anyway, the original poster – Britain Is Broken – apparently wanted us to focus on the blue clothing:

Everyone sharing this mentions the skin tone
It was more to do with the colour of Mary’s clothing, which is traditionally BLUE
YOU mentioned race, NOT ME
Sure mate, your finger just slipped on the colour correction. Anyway, they’re not the only one who’s definitely only annoyed about the pink clothes (wink).

How’s about this charmer, whose bio helpfully informs me that they’re a defender of the crown:

Call me old fashion [sic]. But Mary is always depicted wearing blue. Not bloody pink. Hey @RoyalMail your Christmas stamp is not correct. I will not buy it.

I like my Marys white and my veils blue, and also not on a head

Anyway, being a nerd about this a minute, there’s actually a word for that shade of blue that Mary is often depicted wearing. It’s called Marian blue, HEX #2B4593.

Early depictions often wore red or (gasp!) pink. However, blue overtook red as the colour of choice shortly after the rise of the cult of the virgin Mary as the divine mother, circa 431 CE. So, around the 5th Century CE, you started to see depictions of Mary in bright blue robes.

That bright blue was a show of reverance. It was usually made from ground lapis lazuli, which was worth more gram-for-gram than gold. The shade is also known as ‘ultramarine’, meaning ‘beyond the sea’, because it had to be shipped from the area around what is now Afghanistan.

It eventually came to symbolise purity because of its association with Mary, but that wasn’t its original purpose. Its first purpose, in Marian symbology, was to show importance via wealth. But none of that really matters now, because this is a fucking stamp we’re talking about.

And yeah, Jesus, Mary and Joseph for that matter were all brown:

Featured image via X

By Alex/Rose Cocker

This post was originally published on Canary.