Our materialistic culture’s definition of the Holidays is to take religious and secular holiday music and use it to inspire people to buy, buy, buy. It use to be advantageous for most sellers to use the word “Christmas” but with our culture no longer majority Christianity and soon-to-be mostly “nones” Christmas is a befuddling word and most don’t know what that word means.
Of course, since Vatican II (no one would dare suggest this prior to Vatican II) clergy and laity have been tempted to join the shopping malls in singing holiday music during the season of Advent. Most malls begin the music in October and I suspect some clergy would like to begin their music for Christmas at the same time.
At the same time, churches are putting up Christmas decorations during Advent to compete with the secular businesses who began to do so in October.
What to do? What to do? Oh! What are we to do about this Advent scandal in the Church?
When does your church decorate for Christmas?
I was beyond shocked to see my former parish in Macon arrayed in Christmas splendor before Gaudete Sunday. I think Macon had some kind of Christmas tour of homes or something like that, which inspired Macon to jump the gun (or is it the shark?) and fully array the splendor of Saint Jospeh in Christmas bliss during advent!
OH! THE HUMANITY OF IT ALL!
17 comments:
The following is from a prominent priest who has lamented the destruction, and commercialization, of Christmas:
"...American Catholics are wondering this year why it is their Christmas is losing its intimacy and significance and becoming an empty, commercialized holiday..."
The priest: Father Leonard Feeney.
The date: December 1957 A.D.
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Father Leonard Feeney.
From his newsletter, The Point, December 1955 A.D.
"There will be much talk this December about 'putting Christ back into Christmas.' For the attack that threatens Christmas each December is part of an all-out, full-time offensive — which will be striking at our parochial schools next March, at our New Testament next May, and at the basic Christian structure of our country next October."
"The drive to “put Christ back into Christmas” makes the ancient enemy only half worried — for, at best, it leaves our shattered word “Christmas” only half restored."
"It is The Point ’s lonely battle cry this December that Christmas be entirely salvaged — that, purged of the tinsel and the trappings, it may become, for all our readers, the Holy and Joyous celebration of “Christ’s Mass.”
Pax.
Mark
Mark, for some odd reason your comments and a few others who comment here, go to the Blogger.com spam box. I have to look in it to see if any are there and yours often are (no critique here, just stating the facts). Are you using an odd computer or something to send comments? I don’t understand why blogger sends some to spam and others they don’t. I often get spam that advertises weird things, but I know to delete those right away. In the comment area where you type, below that is an “I’m not a Robert” “reCAPTCHA. Maybe if you use that it would prevent it?
I am not a ROBOT
Father McDonald, thank you for that information. My computer is a little more than one year old.
I check the "I'm not a Robot" box each time that I post to your blog.
I will send this post by the usual method. I will check the "I'm not a Robot" box. I will then try a different way, if possible, to send a test message.
Father McDonald. Thank you.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Test message. Tis time, I did not check the "I'm not a Robot" box.
Thank you.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Both came through the normal way. Have no idea why some go to spam!
Father McDonald said..."Both came through the normal way. Have no idea why some go to spam!"
I am sure that more than a few folks here agree that that is where my comments belong.
:-)
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Well...my answer is yes and no.
Overall, I agree; there should be restraint until we get really close to Christmas. In the past, I have allowed the full decorations to go up a day or two before Christmas, depending on what day it is on which Christmas falls, because it can be challenging for the staff and volunteers to engineer the decorations some years.
Even so, it seems to me it's hard to pin this down otherwise.
There's really very little current guidance on what counts as "Advent" vs. Christmas decoration. The "ordo" I have on my desk, which digests various sources, counsels "moderation" in decoration and music, "not anticipating the full joy" of Christmas. The only specifically Adventish decoration is the wreath, which isn't required at all and about which there are few directives. For example, it can have five candles, and kept around after Christmas, right?
Advent stands in contrast to Lent, which has much clearer austerity, and specific traditions about covering statues and removing things, especially as it approaches the Triduum.
So, what counts as "moderation"? Is greenery -- garlands and wreaths and trees -- "immoderate"? What if they aren't lit, or festooned with ribbons or trinkets?
Is the creche immoderate, especially if it stands empty, or only has shepherds milling about? (Is there anything saying a creche couldn't be displayed 365 days a year?)
One parish I was in would add a bit of decoration each week of Advent. Seems reasonable.
Finally, I might add that the bishops have thrown in the towel on Christmas Eve; pastors are allowed to have "vigils" in the bright afternoon light of 3 pm, and these Masses are packed, with Midnight Mass anticipated at 9 or 10 pm, and Christmas Day is desolate of people.
If we think that Christmas has become commercialized and emptied of its true meaning...then, read the following:
"Traditionalists" of the 1950s, at least Father Feeney, and those of his ilk, held a bleak view of the state of the Church.
In his December 1952 A.D. newsletter, The Point, Father Leonard Feeney unleashed a big-time denunciation of the manner in which Christmas had become, unfortunately, to many Catholics, little more than a commercialized holiday.
Father Feeney, in major fashion, blamed priests for that...he really trashed priests in this December 1952 A.D. edition of his newsletter.
Father Feeney:
"Christmas used to be celebrated by Catholics as the day when God came into our world as a Baby. But Christmas in the U. S. has no such limited significance."
"Christmas in the U. S. is a day composed of, and characterized by, such miscellaneous items as Santa Claus, eggnog, mistletoe, candy canes, scotty dogs, snowfalls, and fruit cake."
"It is a day that provides Americans with an opportunity for re-calling their Thanksgiving gluttony and for anticipating their New Year’s drunkenness."
"Too many American priests have failed to insist on the meaning and the necessity of the Incarnation; they have been careful, when in the presence of non-Catholics, always to talk about “God,” rather than about Jesus, the God-man; they have given the impression that all they ask of non-Catholics is belief in some common un-incarnated deity rather than in the God Who became a Baby at Bethlehem."
"They have pretended to the Jews that there is some other way to the Father than through this Baby; they have pretended to the Protestants that there is some other way to this Baby than through His Mother; they have pretended to all that there is some other way to Heaven than the single way He ordained."
By equivalating the love and knowledge of this Baby with whatever belief one might sincerely hold, they have made Him seem vague and unreal. They have made His message vague, his Church vague, the Way to salvation vague.
"Christmas in the U. S. will be the same in 1952 as it has been in other years. And, in the Catholic churches, Midnight Mass will be said; priests will bring God down upon their altars, in a presence as real and intimate as when He lay in the crib of Bethlehem."
"But when Mass is over, and the door of the tabernacle has been locked, these American priests will go on talking and acting as though it does not matter, for those who choose to ignore it, that God has become a Baby."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Fr K will be happy to hear that this is one place I think the Trads go too far. I dislike the commercialization of Christmas but I have been blessed to experience the joyous anticipation of my wife giving birth. There is an emotional maelstrom that pushes and pulls every bit of me in which I am showering her and the unborn child with whatever they need The Woman arises to admonish me on the next step of my personal growth to be frugal and efficient and to tell my trashy friends to stay away and be home on time for dinner. Little Lent has arrived, held in the hands of my wife. If I should treat all as Christ, then I should also treat her as Mary. It is wonderful preparation and decoration. Of course it isn’t Christmas because the Child isn’t yet born. But soon he will be here and there will be weeks of visitors, family and friends, rich and poor. I need to be ready as much for them as the Child so that I be “present” for both and not out shopping for gifts, food or drink. I am prepared, but waiting with pent up joy.
Let me add another thought...
For a long time I wrestled with Advent, trying to figure out the "logic" of it. The claim that Advent is all about preparing for Christmas simply doesn't make sense, if you pay attention to the prayers and readings of Advent. So if it's not about Christmas, then what the heck is Advent about?
The answer, as I see it, is: Eternity.
Look at the readings and prayers, starting on the 1st Sunday: the emphasis is all about the final judgment and the immanence of Christ's coming; and that coming is not, not, NOT his being born at Christmas!
There's nothing wrong with us, as it were, "reliving" Jesus' birth, even to saying, as RCG says above, "the Child isn't born yet." Nothing wrong at all.
That said, I will argue that such a mindset is not really prominent at all in Advent. That's not what Advent is "about." The readings and prayers of Advent all treat the birth of Jesus as an event that is past which we recall and celebrate. So again, Advent -- on its terms -- is not about "preparing for Christmas."
At a certain point, as I contemplated this, I wondered, so then how does Advent -- thus understood -- connect to Christmas? Why have the season prior to Christmas not be about Christmas?
My answer is that they are both about the same thing: Christmas, too is about eternity. That is the key: Christmas isn't merely, or even mainly, about something that happened in the past -- that's a secular way of thinking about it. Jesus, in that way of thinking, is merely a figure of history. But we would say the opposite: history is a figure of Christ! Christmas is eternity breaking into the physical world, and initiating the eventual reconciliation between heaven and earth. Hence the angels said to the shepherds that the child is a "sign": A sign points to something still greater; that greater is the divinization of all things, summing up all things in Christ, as St. Paul said.
So back to the topic: if Advent and Christmas are both about eternity, with Advent being a more sober approach, and Christmas the more exuberant, then what does this insight suggest as a strategy for decorations?
Pastoral Statement on Penance and Abstinence
A Statement Issued by the National Conference of (United States) Catholic Bishops November 18, 1966:
Advent
5. "Changing customs, especially in connection with preparation for Christmas, have diminished popular appreciation of the Advent season. Something of a holiday mood of Christmas appears now to be anticipated in the days of the Advent season."
"As a result, this season has unfortunately lost in great measure the role of penitential preparation for Christmas that it once had."
6. "Zealous Christians have striven to keep alive or to restore the spirit of Advent by resisting the trend away from the disciplines and austerities that once characterized the season among us."
"Perhaps their devout purpose will be better accomplished, and the point of Advent will be better fostered if we rely on the liturgical renewal and the new emphasis on the liturgy to restore its deeper understanding as a season of effective preparation for the mystery of the Nativity."
7. "For these reasons, we, the shepherds of souls of this conference,call upon Catholics to make the Advent season, beginning with 1966, a time of meditation on the lessons taught by the liturgy and of increased participation in the liturgical rites by which the Advent mysteries are exemplified and their sanctifying effect is accomplished."
8. "If in all Christian homes, churches, schools, retreats and other religious houses, liturgical observances are practiced with fresh fervor and fidelity to the penitential spirit of the liturgy, then Advent will again come into its own. Its spiritual purpose will again be clearly perceived."
9. "A rich literature concerning family and community liturgical observances appropriate to Advent has fortunately developed in recent years. We urge instruction based upon it, counting on the liturgical renewal of ourselves and our people to provide for our spiritual obligations with respect to this season."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
1966 - it’s been downhill ever since unless you live in Fantasyland
My parish has been putting up our trees mid-December for the last few decades, for what I consider a worthy reason.
Our local symphony choir has Christmas concerts in mid-December, and we welcome them to use our beautiful, spacious circa 1905 church. The concerts are respectful of our beliefs, and it brings in hundreds of people who may have no other experience of a Catholic church. The trees, which are 15' high, are lit with clear white lights, and the only other seasonal decoration is our Advent wreath. The choir and audience never fail to be awed to be in the presence of a holy place. Father removes the Blessed Sacrament to a tabernacle of repose in the sacristy. *All* the music is spiritual and reverent.
The trees are *not* lit during subsequent daily and weekend Masses until December 24.
The Nativity, which is antique, near life-sized and imported from Germany, pre-WWI, is not put out until the afternoon of December 23. The Christmas flowers are also put out at this time. Baby Jesus is lovingly placed in his crib at the earliest Christmas vigil Mass at 4:30 PM, in the presence of many of the parish children.
As members of the parish with most beautiful and glorious church in the Cleveland Diocese (IMHO!), Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are a very big deal for us, and our first glance of the church fully decorated and lighted takes our breath away, and suitably puts us in a very reverent and joyful mood for Christmas Mass!
To be quite honest and with great respect, Father, I simply do not think decorating early for Christmas is the greatest scandal facing the Church today. We have plenty of other horrors, such as the sex and power abuse scandals and the subsequent lack of respect and trust from these dreadful actions, to qualify as the greatest scandal facing the Church.
A very blessed Advent to you, Father, and to all here - Susan, TOF
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. But my hyperbole about the scandalous aspect of this is tongue-in-cheek humor. :)
Understood, Father!!!
God bless and protect you in your holy vocation!
Most Byzantine Churches decorate during Filipovka, Philips Fast (the Eastern preparatory season). Usually decorating is preceded by a thorough house cleaning. It's just practical to decorate when people are available to help. It was always the case at my church that lights on trees will not be lit until the Feast of the Nativity itself.
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