Merry Christmas!

Can’t say that for too much longer. Tomorrow morning begins Ordinary Time, and we jolly Catholics have to take down the tree, forswear carols for another year, and generally stop carrying on.

What? Don’t tell me you haven’t been celebrating this whole time?

Must be one of our best-kept secrets: the Christmas season. People talk about the "holiday season," which starts about a week before Halloween, but Catholics have the odd habit of not celebrating Christmas until the actual day of Christmas. That’s the theory, anyway. In theory, we spend the four weeks before Christmas undergoing the penitential season of Advent, which is sort of the more benign, unnoticed uncle of the liturgical family, who always grabs a quiet spot by the chip dish while everyone argues with Lent. Advent is a time of waiting, of mild penance in preparation for the great feast. That’s the fancy way of saying that while everyone else is partying, we’re giving up sweets.

Of course, one could ask whether you really need any extra little sacrifices, since, Catholic or not, you spend those "holiday weeks" enduring holiday decorations, holiday music, holiday traffic, holiday commercials, and, in between the commercials, exhortations to Remember What Really Matters, Whatever It Is, We’re Not Sure Ourselves. And Catholics have the added burdens of being invited to parties they’re not really supposed to go to (especially by their local DREs), fighting over who gets to blow out the Advent candles, and knowing that, on the Third Sunday of Advent, the priest is going to pretend that no one since St. Augustine or so has made a joke about having to wear "rose" vestments. And the congregation will pretend right along with him.

Basically, it’s a penitential season whether we like it or not.

Which reminds me of a great essay I read this (liturgical) year by C. S. Lewis in his collection of essays, God in the Dock. In "A Lost Chapter from Herodotus," the ancient historian (Herodotus, not Lewis) explains the strange customs surrounding the sacred feast of "Exmas."

In the middle of winter when fogs and rains most abound they have a great festival which they call Exmas, and for fifty days they prepare for it in the fashion I shall describe. First of all, every citizen is obliged to send to each of his friends and relations a square piece of hard paper stamped with a picture, which in their speech is called an Exmas-card. But the pictures represent birds sitting on branches, or trees with a dark green prickly leaf, or else men in such garments as the Niatirbians believe that their ancestors wore two hundred years ago riding in coaches such as their ancestors used, or houses with snow on their roofs. And the Niatirbians are unwilling to say what these pictures have to do with the festival, guarding (as I suppose) some sacred mystery. And because all men must send these cards, the market-place is filled with the crowd of those buying them, so that there is great labour and weariness. …

They also send gifts to one another, suffering the same things about the gifts as about the cards, or even worse. For every citizen has to guess the value of the gift which every friend will send to him so that he may send one of equal value, whether he can afford it or not. And they buy as gifts for one another such things as no man ever bought for himself. For the sellers, understanding the custom, put forth all kinds of trumpery, and whatever, being useless and ridiculous, they have been unable to sell throughout the year they now sell as an Exmas gift.

Herodotus goes on to contrast Exmas with the mysterious feast of "Crissmas", which naturally is quite different and involves midnight rituals and images of a mother and child. You may have to hunt the book down for the full essay; I presume it’s still under copyright, though some brave soul posted the excerpts above and a few more here. Anyhow, the joke of it is that the Crissmas folk seem to have a better time all round. Not in some vague, "spiritual" sense, in the sickly sense of that word which means "sentimental", but all round—one group enjoys themselves, the other doesn’t. By the time the Big Day rolls around, the Exmas folk are too sick of the whole thing even to think of continuing the "celebration" another day. They barely have enough strength to brave the post-Exmas sales.

It all comes of muddling things. Preparing is one thing, celebrating another. Try to do both at once, and you wind up with lousy preparations for a party you’ve already half wasted. Maybe we humans are like those toy cars you have to pull back before they can zoom forward. Maybe that’s why we’re not born into Heaven in the first place.

With our weak spirits we should grow old in eternity if we were not kept young by death. Providence has to cut immortality into lengths for us, as nurses cut the bread and butter into fingers.

(Actually, that’s a slightly different point, but it’s from Manalive, and thus is relevant.)

At any rate, having prepared, we party. Festivitas. The feast of Christmas is actually eight days long. Pick up your friendly neighborhood sacramentary, and you’ll see it in print: Tuesday in the Octave of Christmas, Wednesday in the Octave of Christmas… As the kids frantically track each day of break, the Church ladles out the festival wine day by sacred day. When at last Christmas itself is officially over, there’s still Epiphany, and after that, another week (except this year) until the Baptism of the Lord. At which point Christmas is finally, absolutely, don’t-ask-again over.

Meaning, now. Tomorrow’s Ordinary Time. (Er, maybe I should have written all this earlier. But you don’t expect me to blog during the Christmas season, I hope?) Fortunately, there’s still time for one more cup of spiced wine.

And one last Christmas present: Librivox. Time to hear a story.