Search This Blog

30 November 2009

Bah Humbug!


I have a love/hate relationship with Christmas. I love the festivals of Incarnation: Annunciation (and its overlap with Good Friday, then the long silent gestational unmarked season until) Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. I hate the commercializiation of Christmas.
What, I wonder, would happen if everyone who celebrates Christmas bought their gifts after Christmas to give on Epiphany, emulating the traveling sages?
I love blue and purple and white and gold. I don't like red and green (together; OK I like red).
I love Christmas carols and hate Christ-less holiday seasonal music/muzak.
I hate seeing Christmas decorations the day after Halloween - I love the Feast of All Saints and miss the Feast of All Souls.
And I dislike the syncretization of Christmas with Yuletide.

I love Christ-Mass and Advent wreaths and candles and angels and children's choirs and congregational singing. I love the themes of light and hope and peace and joy and the penitential themes: repentance and restoration and fear and death.

Come, holy child, come.
Transform our world, our hearts, our churches into Your Church.
Amen.

4 comments:

  1. I do love the themes of the Advent season. I am a fan of blue as the liturgical colour of the season, though I suspect I'm in a bit of a minority here. Purple is more popular.

    Red and green I could live without. Too "hallmark" like.

    On the other hand, there is a moment after the late night Christmas Eve communion when I step out of the church and look up at this overwhelming gift of life and the grandness of the universe. No moment is as quiet or as sacred for me through the year as that one. There is a profound silence and holy presence in that moment that makes up for all the tacky stuff that leads up to it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like blue and purple together. I want to keep some of the spirit of the "Little Lent."

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree with everything you've said here. At our house we try to avoid Xmas and celebrate Christmas as much as possible. A holy Advent and Christmastide to you.

    ReplyDelete