Joined: Mar 2009
Posts: 5038
Christmas
12/2/2019 at 12:52 PM
We get into the "Christmas Spirit" by celebrating Advent first. As we move through the liturgical seasons, the beginning of Advent marks the beginning of the new liturgical year, with Advent being the four Sundays leading up to Christmas.
We start getting some things ready for Christmas (baking, preparing gifts, etc), but Advent is it's own unique time with it's own customs and events. Central to them (for kids, anyway) is the Feast of St. Nicholas, on December 6. We talk to our kids about who he was and why what he did was important (hint: he saved three sisters from beings sold into slavery, although he's also reknown for punching a fellow bishop), and the kids get some chocolate gold coins, an orange, and a small gift (usually pj's) in their stockings.
We don't put up the tree until much later (our tree stays up for the whole of the Christmas season, which is the 12 days of Christmas lasting from Christmas Day to Epiphany), but our Advent wreath comes out.
While the origins of the wreath are somewhat murky (likely germanic in origin), in modern usage it represents the four Sundays in Advent leading up to Christmas, with 3 purple candles (purple is the colour of penentients, as well as a royal colour), and well as a pink (rose) one for Gaudete Sunday (the 3rd Sunday). The pink represents Joy. This year, we're are praying a Novena during this Advent season when we light the wreath each evening.
We are doing a different type of Advent calendar this year too - each day there's an envelope with a task, activity, prayer or job that should be done each day. Many of the items reflect both spiritual and corporeal works of mercy, although some are just for fun.
It's also a time of giving - we give to the needy (we give year-round, but it takes on a special meaning at Christmas), and there are sometimes acts of service as we are able to at our ages and stages of life. Some of this will be tied into our calendar this year, but some are not.
Finally, when Christmas rolls around it's time to celebrate! While we do gifts, our emphasis is on the liturgical aspects and the family traditions.
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Christmas, in it's modern form, is undoubtably a mash-up of different traditions from different cultures and time periods throughout the past several thousand years. But that doesn't negate it's significance to modern people who practice it. Part of the beauty and success of Christianity as it spread across Europe in the early centuries is that integrated pagan practices into itself and Christianized them. Whether this was a good thing or not really depends on your perspective - I personally think it was a good thing as it allowed people to continue to have a connection to their traditions and histories while embracing the new faith.
As for Christmas "being banned", it was banned by certain groups (i.e. certain Protestant groups, most notably the Puritans who banned anything that it deemed even remotely "too Catholic"), but in the Catholic sphere, to my knowledge, it has never been "banned", although it was not a major feast in the early Church. The focus of the liturgical year is and should be Easter and Pentecost. Christmas has been co-opted by commerical influences into what it's become today so everything *thinks* that's the focus of Christian celebration, when it fact it's not. While it's an important feast and we enjoy it, frankly I long for Easter every year (specifically, the Triduum, the period from Holy Thursday to the Vigil on Holy Saturday).
Edited by Abbysmum, 2019-12-02 12:54:57