The Christmas season is now here. So, Merry Christmas! Now is the time to really to celebrate! In the words of a contemporary Christian song, which takes its cue from our Isaiah reading:
Celebrate the child who is the LightChristmas, our celebration of the coming of the Son of God into the world through the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a reason to rejoice, to make merry, and to celebrate. I read something yesterday that made me scratch my head a little, words to the effect that with the busyness of the season now past, it's time to focus on the true meaning of these days.
Now the darkness is over
No more wandering in the night
Celebrate the child who is the Light1
It made me scratch my head a bit because the whole purpose of the beautiful Advent season is to prepare us to celebrate at Christmas. It's a minor thing, but when it comes to the practice of our faith, we need to be careful not to put the cart before the horse. Christmas is our annual celebration of God's only begotten Son, who for us "and for our salvation... came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man."2 In short, we celebrate God becoming one of us.
As Roman Catholics in the United States, we have three extra days of Christmas. For us, Christmas goes until the feast of the Lord's Baptism, which this year falls on Monday, 9 January. 25 December is just the first day of Christmas, the "a partridge in a pear tree" day!
Christmas season consists of many beautiful feasts: St. Stephen, St. John the Evangelist, and the Holy Innocents, just to mention those that occur during the Christmas octave, which also features the memorial of Saint Thomas Becket. On our liturgical calendar, only Christmas and Easter have octaves, that is, eight days when every day is, liturgically, Christmas day. The Christmas octave ends with the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God, on New Year’s Day.
If we’re serious about Christianity being countercultural, about keeping Christ in Christmas, then we need to take our observance of the liturgical year seriously. Being serious and celebrating are not opposites. During Christmas, we need to be serious about celebrating. “Let us then joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption,” Saint Augustine exhorted. “Let us celebrate the festive day on which he who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time.”3
Beyond the octave, there is Epiphany, our celebration of the visit of the magi to the infant Jesus bearing gifts. Traditionally, Epiphany is the day for exchanging gifts. Finally, as indicated, the Feast of the Lord’s Baptism.
The appropriate response to God becoming man in the person of Jesus, Son of Mary, is worship, praise, and celebration. Nighttime seems a fitting time to celebrate so deep and rich a mystery as the Incarnation of God. To enter the Church from the dark cold of a winter’s night and experience the light and warmth inside is already to experience the meaning of Christmas.
Our reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to Titus, which is often overlooked, points us, on Christmas, toward the Savior’s second coming. Salvation history, whether before or after Christ’s birth, consists mainly of waiting. So, Advent is the Christian mode of being. The difference between these two long periods of waiting for the Lord to come is Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended to constitute the Church.
To be a Christian, then, is to “await the blessed hope” of Christ’s return.4 The way we are to live between the already of Christ’s birth and not-yet of his glorious return, according to this New Testament epistle, is “to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age.”5 This reading for Christmas Mass during the Night serves to remind us not to reduce faith to sentimentality.
Our Gospel itself helps us to avoid this reduction. "Manger" refers to a feeding trough for animals and “swaddling clothes” is a dressed-up way of saying rags. Let’s not forget that the fruit of the third mystery of the Holy Rosary (i.e., Jesus’ birth) is poverty. This is brought into bold relief elsewhere in scripture: “though he was in the form of God, [Jesus] did not deem equality with God something to be grasped,” or held onto. "Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself…”6
We come to Church, not just on Christmas, but throughout the year and throughout the years, to receive the greatest gift of all: Jesus Christ. By the power and working of the Holy Spirit, he gives himself to us in the form of bread and wine. So, each time we come to Mass, we come to the manger, to mangiare (the Italian verb “to eat”). By eating together, we become his verum corpus, his true Body, the Church, his presence in the world until he until he returns. This is the “devoutly” part of how we live this Advent, this time of tension between the already and the not-yet.
Being devout also means celebrating our Savior’s birth throughout this glorious season. After all, the fruit of the fifth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary (i.e., finding Jesus in the Temple) is the joy of finding Jesus. This Christmas, may you experience again, or maybe for the first time, the joy of finding Jesus, who is the greatest gift of all. More than anything else, joy is the hallmark of being a Christian.
Have joyful, blessed, and Merry Christmas!
1 Michael Card. Song-"Celebrate the Child."↩
2 Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, sec, 18.↩
3 The Liturgy of the Hours, Office of Readings, Second Reading, December 24.↩
4 Titus 2:13.↩
5 Titus 2:12.↩
6 Philippians 2:6-8.↩
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