Advent and the baby-moving business
Titian - Flight into Egypt, Circa 1508
Britain’s markets need the Christian “big reveal” that began this week with Advent. Without the coming of the Christ-child, most town-centres would be boarded up. The emotional push and pull of Christmas sustains a prodigious expenditure on gifts and food that buffers shops and stores from the consequences of low footfall during the rest of the year. As a prompt to start the buying, the Americans invented Black Friday, the first Friday after Thanksgiving. It is not only the herald angels who sing.
Christmas as we know it is not the result St. Francis of Assisi sought when, at Christmas 1223, he staged a live re-enactment of the Nativity story in a cave north of Rome. His fellow Franciscan Brother, Thomas of Celano, explained that he wanted to “represent the birth of that Child in Bethlehem in such a way that with our bodily eyes we may see what he suffered for lack of the necessities of a newborn babe and how he lay in manger between the ox and ass.” Thousands of school Nativity plays remain on message. Not the message of Greggs’ advertisement in 2017, a sausage roll adored in a manger.
The artists of the 13th to the 17th century, employed a limited number of ways to portray the worship of the Christ-child. Mary, usually at the centre of the image, sometimes holds the baby, sometimes doesn’t, and there are the walk-on parts for Joseph, the Magi, the shepherds and animal residents of the stable, with fly-on parts for the heavenly host. Popular art sometimes provides touching add-ons. One desolate Serbian church in Bosnia comes to mind, with a mural showing a couple of women, outside the stable, cooking dinner for the Holy Family.
The next episode of the Christmas story painted by the great artists is the Holy Family on the move in flight to Egypt. This time Joseph is leading, holding the donkey. Mary, sitting side-saddle, is using both hands to hold the baby — though Titian has her using a sling.
Some paintings do portray the fleeing family taking a rest, Caravaggio with a half-naked angel providing some musical accompaniment – he would, wouldn’t he? – and an aged Joseph holding the score. Such portrayals, though dignified and meant to reflect reverence, raise the question: why not hands-free, with baby bound safely to the mother? Do we know if babies were carried then, as they commonly are now in Africa, tightly bound with a cloth on the mother’s back?
Caravaggio: Rest on the Flight into Egypt (c. 1597)
Rembrandt and Bruegel give Mary a blanket. And we have watched television pictures of the Palestinian territories where mothers cradle life amidst death, families flee for safety, their donkeys pulling carts with all their belongings.
Rembrandt: The Flight into Egypt (1627)
Fast forward to the UK, where flight with babies from danger is relatively rare; though women’s shelters meet a real need. In comparison with our own children the poverty of the Christ-child is stark. Now, we require equipment to move babies around and a great variety of equipment, too. The baby market has grown and segmented, with products created for people sharing particular needs or interests or spending power. So you can choose from amongst a large range of buggies, strollers and prams. And, just as expensive cars can highlight their owners status, so do these vehicles for babies.
For the status conscious, the Automobil Lamborghini Reef Al Arancio Stroller Bundle, a result of collaboration with the prestigious car manufacturer, sells at Harrods for £4000. Arancio (orange), an intense version of Trump’s fake complexion, is a reference to Lamborghini’s brand colour, supposedly evoking excitement and energy. Purchasers become part of the “Silver Cross Story” getting tips on pregnancy and parenting – get a nanny? — while the baby gets to lie on “high performance automotive fabrics” [sic]. The Silver Cross brand of pram is apparently the choice of the Royal Family; status does not go much higher than that.
The Silver Cross, Automobili Lamborghini Reef AL Arancio Stroller Bundle
To discover more about baby moving options I visited a John Lewis Department Store. A partner/assistant at Nursery Advice was reluctant to advise me. You were supposed to have booked an appointment. I hadn’t. The word “blog” also went down badly. So I missed the demonstration for prams and strollers I’d heard about, complete with a baby doll. But I did extract information on the cheapest buggy in the store. At the sale price of £50 it was the Joie Baby Nitro Stroller. My informant was so suspicious, and lacking in joie, I wondered if he thought the word Nitro had attracted me, and my next question would be where to plant the bomb. At John Lewis the most expensive stroller, at £1,500, is the Cybex Priam Cloud T Bundle, another aspirational name: Priam, King of Troy, supposedly fathered some 50 children.
And the Argos range? Perhaps hoping for an improvement in our declining birth-rate, Argos advertises a double-buggy costing c. £100. The Bugaboo Donkey Duo 5 – who invents these names? – reduced from £1,500 — allows conversion from one to two baby use. The Babylist registry details gifts for the expectant mother, while noting the dilemma of “affordability over long term durability or enhanced functionality”.
Segmentation of the market has produced designs catering for contemporary needs. Shopping locally with family close at hand meant those heavy coach-built prams, popularised by Queen Victoria, were useful. Now parents must navigate buses and (in London) the Underground. Hence narrow or even foldable strollers are a necessity. Less commonly, you want a stroller to negotiate rough ground or one that will fold to go in a plane’s overhead locker. These days you can even rent one. New saleable products constantly emerge though mainly for the more affluent.
Baby carriers, a development of Titian’s sling, follow more in Nature’s grain and cost less. And they are marginally less afflicted by copywriters on Speed. I went to see Hannah Wallace, who between 2018-2024 sold some 450 different baby carrier brands to 20,000 families from her shop Wear My Baby in Tooting. A consultant in safety for babies on the move, her advice is carry “high, tight and in sight”. Slings range from baby monkeys clinging to their mother’s hair to baby-carrying coats, baby wraps and her own IZMI range of carriers. “Babies”, she insists, “are designed to be carried’. The NHS in Scotland agrees: a baby-wrap is in the baby-box given to all new parents.
Fathers and mothers prefer different carrying styles. Fathers mostly have the baby facing outwards to take in the world, for their education, and sometimes overstimulate their child. Mothers mostly hold the baby facing inwards, warm and calm, a half-way house from knees up in the womb. OK, a stereotype, but check it out.
Turning finally from this brief dalliance with the baby-moving market, Christmas as a shopping opportunity is strikingly far from the poor Christ-child as bearer of salvation. Perhaps it is time to stand back a little, to laugh at the excesses of baby business and to learn from entrepreneurs’ creativity in perceiving and serving human needs — like how to move babies around safely.
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