What follows is the first of three postings on the Christmas season of 2012. Call it a Nativity Triduum of sorts.
Those who celebrate Christmas seem to be divided into to camps: the secular and the sacred. Those who seem to revel in its pagan, Bacchanalian roots and those that view Christmas as a deeply spiritual event. Most Christians are on the fault line of that battle--erecting creches along with colored lights, attending church services, if only once a year, and also getting in line at Target at 12:00 in the morning on Black Friday. Midnight madness vs, Midnight Mass.
David Gibson of the Religion News Service writes today about how churches try to offer a bit of the secular in order to get the faithful to notice the sacred. Traditional Midnight Mass is going the way of the C7 incandescent Christmas bulb as pastors try to boost attendance by getting parishioners home by midnight in order to finish assembling and wrapping presents and getting a couple of hours of sleep before the kids are up at dawn. At the other end, clergy are making Christmas church services more kid friendly in order to help the little ones turn their attention from Santa to Jesus for at least a day. Gibson quotes a Catholic priest joking about "Jingle Bell Masses."
A lot of people blame the secularization of Christmas on our modern consumer culture. But the battle between secular and sacred goes back a lot further than that. In his column today Gibson writes about Saint Augustine, the great fifth century Doctor of the Church. Augustine, a convert to Christianity, knew well the pagan rites and festivals, as well as the Feast of the Nativity. For this reason, he cautioned his flock not to downplay the celebratory aspects of Jesus' birth. Christians were to be faithful to the true meaning of Christmas and not to give into pagan celebrations. But they were to combine the celebratory with the sacred.
"So," he wrote, "brothers and sisters, let us keep this day as a festival - not, like the unbelievers, because of the sun up there in the sky, but because of the One who made that sun."
Fifteen centuries later it is a lesson we the faithful should keep in mind. Merry Christmas.
Just thought you might like to know
Those who celebrate Christmas seem to be divided into to camps: the secular and the sacred. Those who seem to revel in its pagan, Bacchanalian roots and those that view Christmas as a deeply spiritual event. Most Christians are on the fault line of that battle--erecting creches along with colored lights, attending church services, if only once a year, and also getting in line at Target at 12:00 in the morning on Black Friday. Midnight madness vs, Midnight Mass.
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| St. Augustine was among the first theologians to write about balancing the secular and the sacred at Christmas |
"So," he wrote, "brothers and sisters, let us keep this day as a festival - not, like the unbelievers, because of the sun up there in the sky, but because of the One who made that sun."
Fifteen centuries later it is a lesson we the faithful should keep in mind. Merry Christmas.
Just thought you might like to know
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