Christ Child in the context of "Christmas gift"

Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A liturgical feast central to Christianity, Christmas preparation begins on the First Sunday of Advent and it is followed by Christmastide, which historically in the West lasts twelve days and culminates on Twelfth Night. Christmas Day is a public holiday in many countries, is observed religiously by a majority of Christians, as well as celebrated culturally by many non-Christians, and forms an integral part of the annual holiday season.

The traditional Christmas narrative recounted in the New Testament, known as the Nativity of Jesus, says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in accordance with messianic prophecies. When Joseph and Mary arrived in the city, the inn had no room, and so they were offered a stable where the Christ Child was soon born, with angels proclaiming this news to shepherds, who then spread the word.

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist, sometimes called the Burlington House Cartoon, is a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. The drawing is in charcoal and black and white chalk, on eight sheets of paper that are glued together. Because of its large size and format the drawing is presumed to be a cartoon for a painting. No painting by Leonardo exists that is based directly on this cartoon, although the drawing may have been in preparation for a now lost or unexecuted painting commissioned by Louis XII. The drawing is the only extant larger-scale drawing by the artist.

The drawing depicts the Virgin Mary seated on the thigh of her mother, Saint Anne, while holding the Christ Child as Christ's young cousin, John the Baptist, stands to the right. It currently hangs in the National Gallery in London.

The Eleusa (or Eleousa; Greek: Ἐλεούσα – tenderness or showing mercy) is a type of depiction of the Virgin Mary in icons in which the Christ Child is nestled against her cheek. In the Western Church the type is often known as the Virgin of Tenderness.

The Nursing Madonna, Virgo Lactans, or Madonna Lactans, is an iconographic type of the Madonna and Child in which the Virgin Mary is shown breastfeeding the Child Jesus. In Italian, it is called the Madonna del Latte ("Madonna of Milk"). It was common in paintings until the change in atmosphere after the Council of Trent, when it was rather discouraged by the Catholic Church, at least in public contexts, on grounds of propriety.

The depiction is mentioned by Pope Gregory the Great, and a mosaic depiction probably of the 12th century is on the façade of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, though few other examples date to before the Late Middle Ages. It survived in Eastern Orthodox icons (as Galaktotrophousa in Greek; Mlekopitatelnitsa in Russian), especially in Russia.

The Icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy (also known as the Icon of the Sunday of Orthodoxy) is a divine celebratory icon created around 1400 to commemorate the first feast of the Triumph of Orthodoxy on the first Sunday of Great Lent. The icon references the overcoming of the Byzantine Empire’s Eastern Orthodox faith from the dominance of the Islamic faith and the Byzantine Iconoclasm in 842. Shown in the icon's composition are important figures such as the Virgin Hodegetria, her child Jesus, and eleven saints and martyrs associated with the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Other elements and saints depicted in the icon’s composition are representative of iconodule ideology and the turmoil endured. It is painted with mediums such as gold leaf and egg wash that are of divine spiritual significance.

Macedonian Renaissance (Greek: Μακεδονική Αναγέννηση) is a historiographical term used for the blossoming of Byzantine culture in the 9th–11th centuries, under the eponymous Macedonian dynasty (867–1056), following the upheavals and transformations of the 7th–8th centuries, also known as the "Byzantine Dark Ages". The period is also known as the era of Byzantine encyclopedism, because of the attempts to systematically organize and codify knowledge, exemplified by the works of the scholar-emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos.

Salus Populi Romani (English: Protectress of the Roman people, also known as the Salvific Health of the Roman people) is a Roman Catholic title associated with the venerated image of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Rome. This Byzantine icon of the Madonna and Child Jesus holding a Gospel book on a gold ground, now heavily overpainted, is kept in the Borghese (Pauline) Chapel of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major.

The image arrived in Rome in 590 A.D. during the reign of Pope Gregory I. Pope Gregory XVI granted the image a canonical coronation on 15 August 1838 through the Papal bull Cælestis Regina Maxima. Pope Pius XII crowned the image again for the secondary time and ordered a public religious procession during the Marian year of 1 November 1954. The image was cleaned and restored by the Vatican Museum, then given a Pontifical Mass on 28 January 2018.

The Panagia Agiosoritissa or Hagiosoritissa (Greek: Ἁγιοσορίτισσα) is the name for a type of Marian icon, showing Mary without the Christ Child, slightly from the side with both hands raised in prayer. The type is known in Latin as Maria Advocata.