We got our first Christmas card yesterday. My cell phone says that if I don't have my Christmas tree yet, I had better hurry up; they are in short supply. Last year I tried to buy Christmas stamps on Dec. 10, and the post office was all out.
Know what?
I don't care anymore. My days have dwindled down to a precious few. I know I won't live to see Christmas get put back into Christmas. For years, the Knights of Columbus, joined eventually by Bill O'Reilly, tried to "put Christ back in Christmas." All they got for their efforts was Kwanzaa. And, anyway, they were trying to put Christ into Advent, not Christmas. When President Trump boasted that -- thanks to him, of course -- people are saying "Merry Christmas" again instead of "Season's greetings," he was talking about the shopping season, not the Christmas season which starts after the shopping season.
But I don't care anymore.
Katherine E. Harmon, on Pray Tell, has had it, too, I guess. She suggests, mostly tongue-in-cheek -- giving up Christmas and celebrating Epiphany. Like the eastern churches. Karl Liam Saur immediately pointed out that one-third of American wage earners wouldn't be able to get the day off most years.
Her idea would probably just extend the "shopping season," which -- I heard from no less than Lester Holt -- began this year in early October. And, by the way, it is now "shopping season," not "Christmas shopping season."
Attention K of C: Put Christmas back into Shopping Season.
We tried Harmon's idea one year. The Blackburns rarely give parties, so both of them are memorable. Our Epiphany Party guests included a future leader of the Catholic Pentecostal Movement and a future CEO and chairman of the Green Bay Packers. Both were in humbler positions then. We moved to Kansas City the next year, and our Epiphany tradition died.
Oh, well, anyway. When I see the first used up Christmas tree -- get yours early! -- waiting for the yard waste collection truck on Dec. 17, I won't even raise an eyebrow. I am past caring.
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ReplyDeleteI went to a local garden center to get my tree yesterday. Their sign said open at 1000 and they weren't there by 1015 so I gave up and went to Lowes and made some billionare richer. I've gotten into the habit of putting the tree up immediately after Thanksgiving given the possibility that someone may not make it to Christmas. I'll just try to maintain a little bubble of quiet Christmas space inside the much larger miasma of shopping space.
ReplyDeleteI don't care either. My Christmas stuff gets done when I have time to do it. Decorations might go up the first Sunday of Advent. Or it might be 3 days before Christmas. They usually come down on the Baptism of the Lord. Because I like the lights. I made the mistake of making fancy decorated cookies years ago. I say "mistake" because the kids liked them and now I can't get out of making them or they would be disappointed. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy choir doing Advent songs and practicing the Christmas ones. I always hope I can talk them into doing Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming, because it's my favorite. But they think the timing is difficult.
Forgive me if I posted this before, but I always loved this rendition.
Deletehttps://youtu.be/BsqM8UWNiNo
Very lovely, Stanley. And I enjoyed hearing it in the original German. Amazing that the singers could all keep their parts together, even though they were scattered out.
DeleteGlad you liked it, Katherine. It is a beautiful hymn and one of my favorites.
DeleteCologne has quite a diverse group of singers! I like the guy in the shades and swishy Matrix coat.
DeleteYes. And I like the way they melt away into the madding crowd afterwards.
DeleteThe Boy was asthmatic, so we still use our fake tree. It goes up Christmas Eve if Raber wants to do it. And if it doesn't come down on January 7, I will turn into a witch.
ReplyDeleteI sent about 20 cards last year and got 10, though three were from a financial institution, a Honda dealership, and the guy who reams out the sewer line every spring. At that rate, I have more than enough cards left over from previous years to last the rest of my life. But I do appreciate the cards I get more.
I enjoy the giving season of Advent, the candles, the special prayers, and little chocolates. I enjoy making a few cookies and caramel corn. I like that things slow down at the holidays, that the snow forces you to remember that your plans are always subject to Forces Greater Than You.
Christmas even just 20 years ago was a far different affair. I have some good memories of the way it used to be, but I am happy with a less forced, noisy, expensive, and much more introspective holiday.
Merry Christmas!
The North American Academy of Liturgy has been working on the idea of beginning the Season of Advent early, like having six or eight weeks of Advent.
ReplyDeleteThe Byzantine Orthodox don't really have Advent. They do have a forty day fast that begins somewhere in mid November. (They really like fasting). They talk about a pre-festal season that looks forward to the Nativity which is celebrated on December 25th when they use our modern calendar.
The feast celebrated on January 6th (modern calendar) is called Theophany (not Epiphany) and has nothing to do with the wise men. Rather it is the manifestation of the Trinity at the Baptism of Jesus. Like Easter (Pascha in their language) it was one of the great days for adult baptisms in the early church. About 15 lessons at the vigil service (not only many more but much better than those at our Easter Vigil Service.).
Beginning last week our local Orthodox church has vespers weekly on Wednesday nights in addition to Saturday nights, and they also have vespers on most weekday nights the week before Christmas. Very similar to their Lenten practice of a Wednesday Vespers plus communion service and then Holy Week services the week before Pascha.
Advent was at times in the Western Church celebrated in White vestments with a Gloria. Then there are the eight O antiphons in the week leading up to Christmas (O Come Emmanuel, etc.) which are sung at Vespers with ringing of all the church bells.
I like the kind of Advent we already have -- when you can get to it through all the trimmings that are piled on top of it. I like the idea of waiting. I don't like the idea of fasting; Advent shouldn't be a little Lent -- or, if you lengthen it, a second Lent. It should be a time of silence, of waiting, of exercising the virtue of hope, not only the liturgical hope of the coming Incarnation, but the in-time hope for the coming year. The best spiritual reflections I've encountered (the pile of them is, as a deacon friend says, now too high for a single Advent) are for this season, not the others. In Advent (when you can get down to it), everything is possible, nothing has been sullied. I try not to even think of Christmas (impossible, and hardly anyone will ever join me) until we reach the O antiphons, which start the real countdown to Christmas -- or what the Germans call Holy Night (Weihnacht), even though, as Karl Rhaner noticed, there is no evidence the birth happened at night.
DeleteChristmas should be "kept," or celebrated, for the 12 days thereof. Epiphany, if the Magi really happened, should be cause for further, but lesser, feasting. I would not object to importing the Theophany into the western church.
Christmas was one of the few feasts that originated in the Western Church. If I remember correctly our Epiphany was supposed to cover three manifestations, the Magi, the Baptism, and the miracle at Cana. They have kind of gotten separated out since we abandoned the idea of an "octave."
Delete"I don't like the idea of fasting; Advent shouldn't be a little Lent -- or, if you lengthen it, a second Lent."
DeleteIt's not like Lent? The Church Ladies said it was.
in RCIA, they were always asking gotcha questions during Advent like, When do you put up your tree, and your answer was always WRONG.
They were really strict about when you could put the Baby Jesus in your creche, if you had one. Xmas Eve after dark.
And only ONE tiny chocolate per day per person if you had an Advent calendar, but basically they frowned on Advent candy.
I guess they were high on penitence and deprivation anywhere they could work it in.
I ignored most of this, as we had 20 years of Anglican Advent traditions that we were used to and still observe, and we weren't interested in dragging out sack cloth and ashes.
Your church ladies missed the point. I have the impression they did that as a habit.
DeleteSomething I did last year and am going to do again this year is a reverse Advent calendar. The calendar was posted on Facebook with a suggested item for donation to a food pantry for each day. But you could donate any non-perishable food item. Our church has a drop off bin for the SVDP food pantry, so I would drop off my items once a week.
DeleteAs far as fasting, I know it is scriptural, but always seemed kind of pointless to me, unless my doing without meant that someone else benefited. And as our pastor pointed out a few years back, cutting back to benefit your own health isn't fasting, it's going on a diet.
I know there is another aspect to fasting, asceticism, in which one offers it up as prayer, and hopes to achieve a heightened sense of union with the divine. But that's always been a spirituality that I can't quite grasp.
I have started to purchase "feminine hygiene products" for the food pantry. There is apparently quite a need for these.
DeleteWell, what IS the point of Advent? To feel bad and get as clean as possible through deprivation to make yourself ready for the Birth, is how Church Ladies explained it.
DeleteEpiscopalians wouldn't disagree, exactly, but they emphasize the joy of anticipation and preparing gifts for Christ through His children, whether it is to show love to family, friends, or those who cannot do for themselves.
I'm going with the joy of anticipation. Because I am sick of having dour Catholic Church Lady rules in my head for the last 20 years as some kind of template for being "truly Catholic."
I think the dour attitudes are maybe not across the board, but an expression of a certain type of Catholicism. During the years we spent in New Mexico it seemed like the Hispanic attitudes about Advent and Christmas were more joyful. They had Las Posadas and luminarias. And tamales. I'm on board with tamales.
DeleteThis is almost all the Catechism says about Advent: "When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior's first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming. By celebrating the precursor's birth and martyrdom, the Church unites herself to his desire: "He must increase, but I must decrease."
DeleteThe music of the season tends to be more helpful than the Catechism. One could spend the whole season working on "Long lay the world, in sin and error pining..."
We used sing "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" in our Unitarian Church. I always liked that one. For penitence in Lent, you can't do better than Mahalia's "Sweet Little Jesus Boy." https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w5_w2XpG7DI
DeleteI like "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" too. I've heard two different tunes for it. Longfellow wrote the words, I've always liked his works.
DeleteYes, I have heard different tunes, too. I think Longfellow wrote it in the midst of the Civil War.
DeleteSo many people in the church, like Jean's Church Ladies, seem determined to strip all the joy out of the Christmas season, including the weeks before Christmas. The liturgical police may think we really should be covering the statues in purple again, to go along with fasting and penitential suffering.
ReplyDeleteBah humbug.
If the coming of Jesus was the coming of Light into the world, then let's celebrate it with a whole lot of light. Including the lights on the Christmas trees, and on homes, and in street decorations downtown.
AS we know, nobody knows the date of Jesus' birth. Scholars say it is in the spring, not during the darkest time of winter. As we also know, the church PTB often chose dates for christian festivals and celebrations to coincide with those of the non-christian, especially pagan, communities. Thus, Christmas was decreed to be celebrated as Light penetrating the darkness, competing in a sense, with pagan winter solstice festivals - festivals celebrating the lengthening of the time light brightened the days. It gave them hope.
Wisdom indeed with the imagery of Light penetrating the darkness. Light bringing hope that we will again make it through the dark and cold of winter to experience the new life of spring.
In modern times, that Light, symbolic of Hope, became increasingly part of Christmas celebrations. As it should.
So why do so many want to snuff out the light? Snuff out the hope? Snuff out the joy - as we approach Christmas?
My mother loved Christmas trees. Because we lived in a national forest,in fire-prone California, the local fire dept cut trees every November to sell to raise money for the fire dept, to thin the forest a bit, and reduce fire danger come summer and fall. So our trees were fresh - unlike those we have bought in suburbia over the years, generally cut in Canada during the summer.
My mom loved the Christmas lights (as do I), especially those on the tree. Our tree smelled heavenly, and needles did not drop. We put it up in late November, and kept it up until sometime in February. My mom took such joy from the trees, and from the lights.
My mother did not live a happy life, she was not a contented person. But the Christmas tree, the Christmas lights, and also the joyful Christmas music gave her joy - and nobody told us then that it was wrong to experience this anticipatory joy during Advent. Thanks be to God.
Anne, that is a lovely meditation. The little weekly prayers in the BCP tell us to throw off the darkness, and embrace the growing light, symbolized by the increasing number of Advent candles. We used to add a big Christmas candle in Christmas Eve, and The Boy, when he was little, enjoyed turning out all the lights and saying "Jesus is here!" we lit up all of them. Matches and fire in the house is quite exciting to a hyperactive child.
DeleteFwiw, in the medieval Harrowing of Hell play, the souls waiting to be delivered talk about a growing purple light as they anticipate their savior.
Anne, I love it that the tree and the lights gave your mother joy.
DeleteMy favorite Christmas trees were when we lived in Colorado, and we would buy them from a guy who cut them in the mountains. They smelled wonderful. Unfortunately one of our boys developed allergies, so we went to artificial ones. Also have cats who try to eat evergreen needles.
You mean your cats don't try to eat the fake needles? Mine must be extra stupid. Also, we can't decorate the bottom of the tree because everything within swatting distance gets knocked off and used for cat hockey until ornaments disappear under furniture. And wrapping paper and gift bags. Mmmm. Their favorite wrecking material. They LOVE Christmas.
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