We are at Christmas, days in which thousands of congratulations are sent and in which all companies send e-mails with an image that serves to congratulate the holidays.
One of the most surprised has left me is this in which you can see the Virgin Mary surprised to see that the pregnancy test has tested positive, because of the unusualness of the image, because of the humanization to which it has been subjected and because the authors of this Christmas greeting (or Christmas advertising campaign) are from the St. Matthew's Anglican church in Auckland (New Zealand).
The objective of the campaign is clear, to lower the Virgin Mary to an earthly, human level, and show how she felt the day she realized she was pregnant. Pregnant she, who I was single, who was very young and that the last thing he expected at that time in his life was to have a son.
The campaign, as expected, is reaping criticism and praise in equal parts. On the one hand there are those who accept it as a method to open the eyes of young people, so that they are aware of what it means to have a child when you do not expect it and on the other hand there are those who consider it almost blasphemous to use the image of the Virgin Mary as if it were a person who lives today, with the pregnancy test in his hands and the gesture of "Oh mother, and now how I tell my parents."
It doesn't seem bad to me personally. I am not a believer (although in my day I was), and I believe that these messages can be given in a thousand ways without having to use the figure of the Virgin Mary, but if you think about it coldly, it is very possible that the girl made a similar gesture when she had to find herself in the situation of having to explain to everyone that she was pregnant and that there was no man involved.
As it is usually said, religion is a subject that does not usually marry very well with anything else and shows a button. It is gathering religion and publicity and realizing that the result is dangerous.
According to St. Matthew's, the image will get the message they want to convey because "Many current women can feel fully identified with the Virgin Mary". For now broadcasting are getting, that's for sure.
