Religion - 2 ways

Around this time of the year we start to celebrate Christmas by putting up the tree and by bringing out the gold, frankincense and myrrh. Last year we displayed these gifts from the Orient in a wooden box from India. This year we have used a wooden dish from the Fijian Islands.

The Wesleyan missionary the Rev. Thomas Williams has been called, with justification, the principal authority upon the state of society among the Fijians when Europeans first came into contact with them. With his wife and a few other dedicated colleagues he conducted his ministry in the considerable hardship and danger of the cannibal islands of Fiji between 1840 and 1852. He described his experiences in Fiji and the Fijians: The Islands and their inhabitants. published in 1858. In the book he illustrated a dish of similar style and described it as a priest's inspirational yaqona dish in duck form, in Fijian a daveniyaqona vakaga, used within the Spirit Temple. Yaqona, a mildly narcotic brew made from the plant Piper methysticum was drunk from the dish by the bete, the priest, via a straw.

The frankincense and myrrh I bought in the old souk in Muscat, the gold cat came from the British Museum shop and the gold leaf skeleton from a Christmas craft fair held in Stanstead Airport terminal!

Best seen zoomified.