Twelve Days of Christmas – Day 12: The Reason for the Season
Jan 5th, 2008 by Tana
Ever since Steve and I got married, he has wondered why I didn’t grow up going to church on Christmas Day, and I have been completely mystified as to why you would need to do such a thing. [He was raised Catholic, I was raised Adventist.] That is, until this year.
A few months ago, I began playing the piano for mass. We attend a small country church, and they didn’t have any musicians for one of their services. Prior to this year, I did not have a piano so there was no way I could practice and prepare to play. I enjoy doing it – it gives me a reason to practice the piano each week other than just playing for fun, and the people who attend seem to really appreciate having music rather than singing a capella.
It has always seemed to me to be strange every year that we don’t sing many Christmas carols at church. I never really paid that close attention, but as pianist, I had every intention of seeing to it that we got to enjoy singing them during the holiday season. That was, until our priest told me, “No Christmas music until Christmas Day.”
Turns out, Catholics celebrate the twenty four days of Advent by reliving the Jews longing for Jesus to come. So, no Christmas carols. No celebratory music such as the Gloria. As a Catholic, you are supposed to fast and pray. And you’re even supposed to give up something, a la Lent.
Why? Because this is how Christmas has been celebrated for hundreds of years, since the Middle Ages, our priest told me.
It should have been as no surprise to me. Once I thought about it, I realized that many of the sermons and articles in the bulletin this time of year were about how Christmas isn’t celebrated correctly and how it used to be celebrated, how the Santa Claus we know isn’t anything like the real Santa Claus, and so forth. I had always felt a certain hostility towards the season – now I knew why.
Now growing up Adventist, we had similar sermons and articles about the real meaning of Christmas. But they were along the lines of putting Christ back into X-mas, remembering the Reason for the Season, and so forth. It was always delivered, however, with the encouragement to remember to celebrate the real meaning of Christmas rather than being so swept up in all the other things that you forgot you were celebrating the birthday of the One who came to save the world. It enriched the season rather than making you feel guilty for participating in it.
Now please understand, I have a degree in Humanities – aka General Studies – with an emphasis on Religious Studies. I spent quite some time in college taking classes about how we think about our religion affects how we think in our society. I studied works such as Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism where he argues something along the lines of Protestant’s idea that they can read the Bible and understand it themselves (the basis of Protestantism) and the idea of capitalism where anyone can start their own business and have the opportunity to be successful (or fail) go hand in hand. So I’m looking at this from a philosophical perspective rather than a ‘this Bible text says this’ approach. I’m taking a practical, utilitarian approach rather than a this-is-the-correct-way-to-do-things approach.
If Catholics are supposed to spend Advent fasting and praying and looking forward to the coming of the Messiah, then it is no wonder that attending mass on Christmas Day is so important. It’s the culmination of what you have spent 24 days pining after. For Adventists (and many other Protestants), you’ve been celebrating the birth of Christ all month – why do you need to go to church and celebrate the birth of Christ on the day itself? Therein lies the solution to the mystery Steve and I had been living for so many years.
Now in a literal sense, for the Catholics to change their practice, they would need a direct proclamation from the Pope in order to do so. Which probably isn’t going to happen. So there isn’t much choice in the matter.
But from a Protestant perspective where you question everything with the assumption that it with either stand the test or you will find a clearer truth (which is the thinking I was raised with), the whole Catholic way of celebrating Christmas does not make sense. At least, not to me.
The only explanation I was really given was (directly) that this is how it’s been done for centuries. Well, they also believed – for centuries – that the world was flat. [And no, I am not interested in joining the Flat Earth Society.]
I also don’t celebrate my children’s birthday’s in the weeks leading up to them by remembering and reliving the agony of those last few weeks of pregnancy – even if all has gone well, you still feel like a whale at that point, you’re tired of being pregnant, and you just want it all to be over (the pregnancy part) to say nothing of your desire to finally get to hold your baby in your arms. Really. Not my idea of fun. [Just saying…]
And while one of my favorite things about the Catholic church is that you have a standard way of doing things, a routine to follow, I think this is perhaps one issue where the decision needs to be made on a local level rather than by a single individual half way around the world.
Why? Remember, now, that I grew up in an atmosphere where the biggest issue at Christmas time was putting the reason back into the season. If you aren’t allowed to celebrate the reason for the season when everyone else is doing it – at least, where we live, then of course the meaning of Christmas is going to be separated from the celebration of it. Everything you do before Christmas takes on a secular perspective because you aren’t allowed to be celebrating the religious aspect of it yet. You leave a vacuum that can only be filled by secular things. Like evil commercialism, which is what our priest told me Christmas in modern society is all about. Well, no duh!
The thing is, there are many good things that have come out of the commercialization of Christmas. The spirit of capitalism says it is as honorable to sell as it is to buy. If no one sold Christmas cards or pictures, I wouldn’t have a reason to hear from friends and family that I hadn’t seen but still cared about. If people didn’t make money arranging, playing or singing Christmas carols, we wouldn’t have so many of the beautiful songs and arrangements we get to enjoy every year. If no on sold albums, we couldn’t listen to the best artists in the country singing those songs. If there were no gifts at Christmas, I would miss out on showing appreciation to the people around me – I wouldn’t be giving them gifts to thank them for being a part of my life (which, to me, is what gifts are mostly about anyway). If it weren’t for commercialization, we wouldn’t have the ingredients and recipes to make many of my favorite holiday recipes. Someone came up with a recipe or ingredient that was really good and decided to sell it – whether it be holiday mints or Peanut Blossom cookies. Think of all the joy and happiness we would miss out on.
Commercialization isn’t inherently evil – it is how it is used that matters. It can make your life richer by enhancing the things you do, or it can make your life hollow by becoming an object in itself.
Don’t get me wrong – I think tradition is very important. I’ve spent twelve days here talking about the traditions of Christmas that mean the most to me. But I also think you need to grow where you’re planted.
Celebrating Advent and the Twelve Days of Christmas as in times past has fallen by the wayside, essentially. That tradition was not mandated anywhere in the Bible – it was developed during the Middle Ages, aka post-biblical times. It’s not necessarily a bad tradition; it simply doesn’t fit with how Christmas is celebrated in modern society. In fact, adhering stubbornly to that tradition would mean missing out on the most meaningful parts of Christmas.
The Reason for the Season is very important – after all, Christmas is kind of like the greatest birthday celebration ever. It is one of the cornerstones of the Christian faith – if Christ had not come down to earth and been born as a babe, he couldn’t have died for us and thus there would be no salvation. Both traditions celebrate that, just in completely different ways.
Ultimately, I must confess, with my background in Humanities and Religious Studies, I find this whole debate fascinating. It makes me want to go back and learn how the traditions evolved over the years. When did it start to change? Why?
Did I ever mention that one of the most interesting papers I wrote in college was about how the various artistic styles – from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance, Baroque period, and so on – reflected the main tenants of the religious thinking of the day? Fascinating. The relationship was far more direct than you might realize. But that’s another topic, another post, another day.
I love the birthday/last weeks of pregnancy analogy 🙂