Advent: Waiting to Open Happiness
Some thoughts on delaying gratification for deeper joy, PLUS an invitation to an Advent service of song and prayer with Archbishop Cordileone Dec. 15—with an Advent carol based on a poem of mine!
The ‘holiday season’ is celebrated almost in a frenzy. Besides the frantic ‘holiday’ shopping (which usually includes lots of personal purchases—retailers count on them!) we engage in the decking of our homes and places of business with tinsel and other geegaws and the creation of, purchase of, and indulgence in far more than we need of ‘holiday foods and beverages,’ accompanied by the din of ‘holiday songs.’
Most of the holiday songs we hear before Christmas have nothing to do with the real reason for the season. Just for one example, what does “All I want for Christmas is you?” have to do with what the feast is really about? Unless the “you” being yearned for is Jesus,—which is not true for most of us, at least consciously, even though the longing is probably actually for the unfailing eternal love that only He can bring.
The seasonal bacchanal comes to an abrupt halt on the actual day of Christmas. As soon as the profit motive dries up, the frenzy halts, and a peace descends. Too much peace, I contend. Christmas Day is when the rejoicing should begin.
How many times do we see Christmas trees out on the curb awaiting trash pickup on Christmas Day?
For Catholics, the four weeks before Christmas should be a time of preparation for the celebration of Christ’s birth, a time of sober waiting. These four weeks of waiting that start on the first Sunday of December are called Advent, which means “coming.”
Advent is so important to the Church that it is the beginning of the liturgical year. During Advent, we anticipate the celebration of the First Coming of Christ that we remember on December 25, on Christmas Day, and we also are reminded to be ready for Christ’s expected Second Coming at the end of the world. The Advent vestments are purple, the color of penance. The Christmas vestments are gold or white, to show our joy.
It seems to me that to observe the real spirit of the season, Christians should only start the singing of Christmas hymns and carols on Christmas Day, and hold off on the decorations and the parties until then. The festivities can then continue throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas up to the Feast of the Epiphany. Or even longer. (Look for more about the Christmas season later in this piece.)
G. K. Chesterton had strong opinions on this subject as you can see by this meme:
It would be hard to think of any writer in the last several generations who celebrated Christmas as heartily as G. K. Chesterton. It was precisely because of this, and not in spite of it, that he said with a severity not characteristic of his benign personality: “There is no more dangerous or disgusting habit than that of celebrating Christmas before it comes.”
Dangerous, that is, because the rush neglects the deepest mysteries of life which are the stuff of Advent meditations: Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell; and by that neglect we are abandoned to a life of anxiety, unable to know why we were made or what we are to become. Disgusting, that is, because rushing Christmas spoils the appetite for higher things and tries to replace holy joy with entertainments that quickly become boring.—FROM THE PASTOR, December 7, 2014, by Fr. George W. Rutler
A Very Marian Prayer Service, One Better Opportunity: Celebrating Advent: with Mary, Music and Prayer
Offering an alternative to the ever-present “holiday music” during the weeks before Christmas, firmly in the spirit of not celebrating Christmas before its time, on December 15 Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone will lead the Second Annual Very Marian Prayer Service at Star of the Sea Church in San Francisco.
Here we will hear beautiful Advent music both new and old, to get in a more fitting mood.
This year, Archbishop Cordileone’s Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship continued its mission to bring new sacred music of the highest quality into the culture by commissioning two new Advent Carols that will premier at the service.
Fr. Dwight Longenecker has put new words to a traditional Welsh lullaby Suo Gân (which recently appeared in the Disney film Empire of the Son). Composer William J. Fritz has set the words to music in a new arrangement titled "Our Lady's Lullaby.”
Frank La Rocca, the Benedict XVI Institute’s composer in residence and James Mathew Wilson, the institute’s poet in residence, created "While All the Earth in Darkness Sleeps" a new setting of the 6th century Akathist Hymn (still widely chanted in Eastern Orthodoxy, but less well-known to Roman Catholics). The Akathist Hymn sings the praises of the Holy Mother and Ever-Virgin Mary beginning with the salutation of the Archangel Gabriel: "Rejoice."
Two hymns commissioned for last year's Very Marian Advent Prayer Service will be sung again. "Chesterton's Carol" set to music by Mark Nowakowski, and "Our Lady Expectant,” based on a poem by me (Roseanne T. Sullivan) and set to music by Wilhelmina Pariseau. The event will be professionally recorded.
(The music of "Our Lady Expectant,” is available for use both in concert version and in a simpler form suitable for parishes. For performance of the music in liturgy you can download it here and use it for free. To use the music for public performances, please contact the composer at https://minapariseau.com/contact.)
An 8-voice schola conducted by Timothy McDonnell will also sing hymns by Victoria, Palestrina, Sweelinck, Handl and more.
A Very Marian Advent Prayer Service
Sunday December 15· 4 - 5:30 PM PT
Star of the Sea Church
4420 Geary Boulevard
San Francisco 94118
A reception follows.
Register here.
You have two choices for registering. If you can be in the San Francisco Bay Area, December 15, you may register for an in-person ticket. Registration is not necessary, but it helps in planning.
You can also register to receive a link to hear a professional recording of the event afterward, when the recording is made available.
Christmas is a season, not a day
What I also want to emphasize here is that in spite of what most people seem to think, the time before Christmas is not the Christmas season. On Christmas Day, the season is just beginning.
Traditionally, the Twelve Days of Christmas end January 5. The Epiphany, which is also called the Feast of the Wise Men, is traditionally celebrated on January 6. At my house, the wise men finally arrive at my manger scene on January 6 after they have been wandering around the living room ever since the creche was put up.
But Christmas is not over even at Epiphany. The season goes on for forty days—or at least it used to.
The Christmas season was traditionally celebrated for a total of forty days–until 1969. Liturgical scholar Dom Prosper Gueranger wrote in 1868, a century before that, “We apply the name of Christmas to the 40 days which begin with the Nativity of Our Lord, December 25, and end with the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, February 2.
See this post for more about that topic:
And this:
In the traditional liturgical year, the Christmas season ends forty days after it starts, on February 2, on a feast day that has been called many names because it celebrates many things. The feast has been called Candlemas because candles are blessed at the Masses that day. The Purification of Our Lady in the Temple is a second name for the feast. In the Jewish religion, a woman presented herself for purification at the temple forty days after the birth of a male child. The Presentation of the Child Jesus is the current title of the feast.
When Christ was carried into the Temple forty days after His birth to be dedicated to God as required by Jewish Law for every firstborn son, He was recognized by an old man named Simeon and by an old woman named Anna, who had been waiting years for His coming. In some traditions, the feast is also called “The Meeting” because of Christ’s meeting with the prophet Simon and the prophetess Anna.
These thoughts just skim the surface of all the rich symbolism and significance of these feasts.
The point to remember is that the Catholic Church dedicates a long time, the symbolically important number of forty days, to the celebration of Christmas, and, contrary to public opinion, the celebration does not end on December 25.
Differences of opinion about when Christmas actually ends are nothing new. For example, here is a poem from colonial Williamsburg:
When New Year’s Day is past and gone;
Christmas is with some people done;
But further some will it extend,
And at Twelfth Day their Christmas end.
Some people stretch it further yet,
At Candlemas they finish it.
The gentry carry it further still
And finish it just when they will;
They drink good wine and eat good cheer
And keep their Christmas all the year.
The gentry in the poem were missing the point: by drinking and eating as if it were Christmas all year, they weren’t celebrating the feast of Christmas any more, just gormandizing. Just like we moderns do . . .. But at least none of the people in the poem would be likely to take the Christmas tree down and throw it out the day after Christmas. They’d hold out at least until January 2, “When New Year’s Day is past and gone.”
Parting Thoughts about Christmas, from a Surprising Source
I came across the following apt observations about how Christians should celebrate Christmas, at an atheist website, of all places:
“Conservative evangelical Christians complain about people taking the “Christ” out of Christmas, but they seem to forget that they have already taken the “Mass” out of Christmas (Mass being a service including Holy Communion). When was the last time a prominent figure on the Christian Right has argued that Americans should remember to attend Mass on this Holy Day? . . . This is just one of many masses that have been excised from the season. . . . So, the next time a Christian insists that we put the Christ back in Christmas, tell them that they should also:
· Put the Mass back in Christmas
· Restore Candlemas
· Restore the Feast of the Epiphany
· Restore the Advent season
· Restore gift-giving to the real Christmas season, which occurs after Christmas day
· Don’t put up a Christmas tree until Christmas Eve — if at all
· Use Christmas as a day of contemplating Christ, not for engaging in commerce”
When I write about this topic, I am trying to correct misunderstandings and to help other people grasp the beautiful significance of feasts that has been obscured in a commercially oriented secular Christmas. I hope to bring to light and show off some riches from the treasury of the Church’s traditional observation, to give to others some glimpses of the joys of Christmas that they may have never seen before, joys that can only be experienced fully by humbly observing the sober time of preparation that the Church calls Advent.
The good news is the less I decorate and the more I avoid holiday celebrations, the more I treasure the four week cycle of Advent. I get thrilled by the Advent readings in the Divine Office and the Gregorian chants for the Masses, which remind me of the Love that was behind the First Coming of Christ when He came to live among us and will be behind the anticipated Second Coming of Christ, when He comes to take those of us who love Him to live with Him forever.
My partially self-chosen poverty of having a minimally decorated house, avoiding pre-Christmas treats, staying away from holiday parties and cookie exchanges and the like, all lead me to a deeper joy when the penitential season of Advent is over and when finally we reach the proper time to celebrate the birth of Christ, the Baby God. The Church gives us a long time to celebrate, until Candlemas on Feb. 2, during which time we can have our decorations and our feasting, for 40 whole days.
In this and many other areas of life, it seems to me, waiting and self control only makes the satisfaction deeper and more meaningful. And that alone, after all, might be a very good reason for keeping Advent.
