Sometime after the 1950s things began to go off the rails in regards to Christmas in America. But since we’re all about restoring our traditions around here, let’s get things back on track.
First, a primer of where we are. From what I see, the merchants of the country have managed to commercialize the holiday and have pushed the season of Christmas — which they refer to as “the holidays” — from just after Thanksgiving to December 25. For all intents and purposes, they have established this month-long period as an extended shopping spree under the guise of a festive “season”. Therefore, the Christmas decorations and “holiday music” on the radios, etc. go up immediately after Thanksgiving. And they all come down on December 26.
I recall a particular radio station in the area that began 24-hour “holiday” music very early in December or late November. And I remember when I was driving home after midnight on Christmas night, they had switched back to their ordinary pop music format. I was furious because I couldn’t help but feel that they “used” the people’s holiday and then, like a switch, moved on. You see this also in the malls and stores, where immediately after Christmas the decorations come down.
Why, it’s almost like the merchants of the country aren’t even Christian… but love to abuse the Christian’s holy day to extract money from their bank accounts.
This is all completely backwards; and let us explore why that is.
The Church’s liturgical calendar year begins with Advent, which typically starts about 3-4 weeks before Christmas. (Or, more precisely, Advent begins on the Sunday closest to November 30.) What is Advent? To understand that we have to remember what we are celebrating at Christmas: the coming of our Lord into this world. As such, Advent is the period of preparation before the coming of our Lord. It mimics the darkness that the world was in before our Lord came. In that sense, it is a solemn and penitential season, commonly called a “mini-Lent”. During this time, Christmas lights and trees and carols and parties and festivities are quite inappropriate.*
This is also reflected in the readings at the Mass. On the First Sunday of Advent we hear about the end of the world and the Second Coming. Why? Because as we prepare to commemorate the First Coming of our Lord at Christmas, it is an appropriate time to prepare ourselves for the judgment at the Second Coming (or, more likely, to prepare for our personal judgment at our death). The readings at the Second and Third Sundays of Advent recall the penitential life of St. John the Baptist who lived as “a voice crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord.'” And finally, the Fourth Sunday of Advent brings us right up to the Incarnation nine months before Christmas and gives us that sense of anticipation.
So what’s the point?
The world says that you celebrate Christmas beginning at Thanksgiving, and you do it for a month. On the other hand, the tradition is that we spend this month reflecting on the darkness of the world before the coming of Christ. The short, dark days of the season accentuate that reflection. So there must be a time of penance before the celebration of Christmas. Can one feast without first fasting? Can one harvest without first planting? Can you have Easter Sunday before Good Friday? See how backwards and materialistic the world is?
Don’t let them take Advent from you! It is a spiritually powerful time of the year.
Now that we know what Advent is, what can we say about Christmas? Does it end at the stroke of midnight on December 26, as our new culture-setting overlords tell us? Nope, they’re wrong again. Christmas is not just a day but a season, the length of which depends on how you see it.
For most major feasts, the Church establishes an octave for celebration. An octave is simply eight days. So the Octave of Christmas runs from December 25 through January 1, and the Church book-ends this octave with two holy days of obligation. This eight-day period is the Christmas feast proper. For many, Christmas will run for twelve days, to the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6). For others, the season extends to the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord (January 13), and this is pretty much a hard limit for when Christmas decorations are expected to come down and Christmas hymns are no longer sung. In the older tradition (before the changes in the 1960s), the season of Christmastide lasts for 40 days, which takes us to the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Presentation of the Lord on February 2, which is more simply known as Candlemas.
So, that’s the skinny on that.
Perhaps at another time we can contemplate how they’ve managed to also wreck Christmas by secularizing its carols and symbols to the point that our Lord is practically an afterthought.
(* Since we have to live in the world, a common compromise is to begin putting up decorations sometime in the first and second weeks of Christmas, and keep Christmas carols for just before December 25. I put my lights up on the Feast of St. Nicholas, December 6, and leave them up until Epiphany.)