Here we are on December 31. Smart money says people are already turning out of Christmas and toward the New Year: to school or the office; to the sales; to resolutions; perhaps to Dry January or Veganuary or other horrors. Classic FM are dialling back on the carols and themes from Christmas films and returning to more normal programming. I must confess that I have been tempted to turn on my work laptop – very briefly, you understand – even though I’m not due back to the grindstone until next Monday.
This is all quite wrong: Christmas has barely started.
We are only at the rough midpoint of what should be a twelve-day feast leading to the Epiphany, one of my favourite days in the whole church year. There was a great programme on the BBC a few weeks ago called A Merry Tudor Christmas, in which the historian Lucy Worsley introduced the audience to some of the wonderful customs that had grown up around the Christmas season in late medieval England. We heard about wassailing, game pies, dances, and the rumbustious revels of Twelfth Night, when traditional social expectations were suspended and Lords of Misrule from among the ordinary folk were permitted – both metaphorically and occasionally literally – to tweak the noses of the gentry.
Admittedly, we live in a very different country from our medieval forebears. With the best of intentions, it is very difficult for us to weave into our lives the liturgical calendar, and the rhythm of the seasons, in the way that was natural to them. The material and social conditions of modernity are a powerful obstruction to doing so.
Nevertheless, I do think that it is within Catholics’ power to keep Christmas in a distinctive way.
The main way in which we can do this is to step outside of the rhythms of secular society, setting our faces against the year-round glut of food and consumer goods, and instead trying to introduce into our lives periods of abstinence and frugality as well as celebration. As I noted in last week’s post, there is nothing wrong with enjoying good food and drink, in its right place. But even setting aside the moral arguments against constant indulgence, without fasting and denial sensual pleasures soon lose their savour.
I wonder whether one reason why the secular modern Christmas runs out of steam after Boxing Day isn’t that it fundamentally isn’t that different from the rest of people’s lives any more. Meat and alcohol and chocolate are cheap, while many things that were once seasonal treats are now available 365 days a year. Toys are abundant and inexpensive. Mass-produced decorations and lights are inescapable.
Since we are looking forward, we might resolve in the coming year to embrace the Church’s often neglected but wise strictures about Advent. The weeks leading up to 25th December are meant to be a time of penitence and fasting, not entirely unlike Lent. If we do not prepare ourselves through some self-denial and self-examination, we ought not wonder that we are jaded and bored by the time the credits roll in the Boxing Day afternoon film.
If we do keep Advent, then how precious the Twelve Days come to be, even if we don’t get our gold rings or our lords a-leaping. And how much more closely we can focus on the miracle of the Incarnation and the wonder of our salvation.
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