All Advent long, observant Catholics and other Christians hold the line against premature Christmas, holding off on decking the halls and singing Christmas carols during what is meant to be a time of preparation.
Now, as the world is busily dismantling what’s left of its Christmas trappings, it’s time for Christians to double down on the continued celebration of the Christmas season, which continues through the Christmas Octave (to January 1, the eighth day after Christmas, and thus the day of Jesus’ circumcision, celebrated as the feast of Mary the Mother of God) until after Advent to the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. (This year that means that Christmas runs through January 9, and ordinary time returns on January 10.)
This is especially important for families with young children, I think, to instill in them a proper sense of liturgical time at an early age.
As far as the larger culture goes, the notion of the Christmas season would seem to be a lost battle. (Suz commented recently how depressing it was to get an “After Christmas Sale” catalog before Christmas actually arrived: “It’s like it’s never actually Christmas!”)
Within our families and churches, though, we can sustain a culture of resistance. How do we do this?
Each year it’s good to take a look at the traditions with which we shape our lives. In this post I’ll share some things that we do in the Greydanus household (or Huis Greydanus, to invoke my Dutch family roots). This includes Christmas movies, of course—but I’ll save that for a follow-up post. Please share your own family traditions in the combox.
The proper celebration of Christmas begins, of course, with keeping Advent in Advent.
I know some hardcore families that don’t light the lights until Christmas Eve. I’m sympathetic to that approach—but if I tried it in this house, there would be mutiny. Anyway, high principles are fine things, but I would feel too Scroogy driving past lit-up houses in my neighborhood and coming to my own darkened house. I don’t want to depress my neighbors.
Our compromise is Gaudete Sunday weekend, the third Sunday of Advent. Gaudete, of course, is Latin for “Rejoice!” and on Gaudete Sunday, when our waiting is more than half over, our liturgical tradition allows us a foretaste of Christmas joy (thus the rose Advent candle and rose vestments).
On this weekend, we buy and trim our tree, light our house, and set up our various creches—without the baby Jesus figures, which come out on Christmas Eve. We have an indoor Nativity set in our dining room, and a larger outdoor set that we actually put up on our porch roof. The younger kids also have toy Nativity sets that they play with, and there’s a plastic Holy Family set that goes by the Christmas tree. Some families set up the Magi at a distance from the creche and move them slowly closer and closer, approaching Epiphany. I think we may have done that one year, but it’s not a regular thing for us.
We have an Advent wreath, of course, and we light the candles each evening during our evening family devotions. We hang up a felt “Jesse tree,” and add Old Testament readings (with corresponding felt symbols) to our devotions. (I usually improvise a bit in selecting OT passages, and sometimes new felt symbols must be devised on the spot for a new reading I’ve suddenly decided to include. Or a symbol originally intended for an omitted reading may do double duty.)
We also add Advent songs to our family devotions: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” “O Come, Divine Messiah,” “People, Look East,” “Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus.” On the last week of Advent, as Christmas approaches, we may sing “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.”
On Christmas Eve, after Mass, we light our Advent wreath in the living room by the Christmas tree, and I recite the infancy narratives from Matthew and Luke. I do it from memory, because I like maintaining eye contact with the kids for this. This year, the day before Christmas Eve, I also did the annunciation to Zechariah, Elizabeth’s conception, the Annunciation to Mary, and the birth of John from memory. (I don’t memorize the OT Jesse tree readings.)
After the infancy narratives, we pray a rosary, sing “Joy to the World!”, pray some more prayers, and then, to the verses of “Silent Night,” we process around the house bringing various baby Jesus figures to the various creches around our house.
Christmas presents are in the morning. We don’t do milk and cookies for Santa. We don’t make a big deal about Santa not being real. We figure what really matters and what we’re really celebrating should be obvious to the kids.
What we do after Christmas is as important as what we do during Advent. It’s important to celebrate the Christmas season as more than a wind-down from the big day. Here are some things we do.
First, as tempting as it may be to take vacation time from work before Christmas, I save mine for the Christmas Octave—and if I can take the first week in January and complete the “12 Days,” so much the better.
We’re fortunate enough to be friends with a number of large families at our parish, and every year our families get together for a Christmas party during the Christmas Octave—never before Christmas. We sing carols and so forth.
This is especially important for me with respect to my kids’ experience, because our family generally celebrates Christmas Day itself with family members who aren’t believers. I want my kids to have a larger experience of celebrating the Christmas season with other believers—not just in our family, and not just in Mass.
Each year we try to make a Christmas season pilgrimage to a local parish, St. Lucy’s in Newark, that puts up a fantastically elaborate Bethlehem village Nativity display. The display fills up an entire wall of a side chapel. It’s an Italian parish, and as with sacred art down through the ages, “Bethlehem” is done up in a markedly Italian style (you can see hocks of ham hanging in the store windows!). The little houses light up, there’s a windmill that turns, there’s even running water. I made a video a couple of years ago on my old iPhone; I’ll embed it here.
So, those are some of our Advent and Christmas traditions. Please share yours!
Coming in Part 2: Advent and Christmas movies!
Comments
Post a Comment
When our children were growing up, we never put a tree up until after the 19th of December. We always processed through the house after midnight Mass with the statue of Jesus to place in the creche. This was the younger child’s “mission.” In fact, one year, she dropped it on the marble fireplace and “He” broke in two, and the wailing didn’t stop until Dad came to the rescue with crazy glue.
There was an advent wreath and the candle(s)were lit and prayers were said each night before dinner.
We celebrate all 12 days of Christmas and my oldest daughter and I always leave all decorations up until February 2nd. We chalk and bless our houses on January 6th.
Joy to the World!!
For Advent, we have an Advent wreath, an Advent calendar filled with scripture passages, and a Jesse Tree. Gaudete Sunday is when we buy a Christmas tree and put up our Christmas decorations as well.
On Christmas day, after atending Mass, we visit our Catholic relatives. We usually open presents before Mass to accomodate the travel time.
I look forward to the movie suggestions; I’ve been trying to make a list of my own.
When my mom was living, we held a Boxing Day Tea for all our English friends. (My parents were English.) We did it one year after she died, and realized what a miracle worker she was. It is not easy to entertain and throw a big party on Dec. 26! We made sausage rolls, mincemeat pies, ham and egg pie, shepherd’s pie, steak and kidney pie, pickled onions, Branston pickle, Stilton cheese, Battenburg cakes, Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherry…all the English stuff that was so special. Nowadays it’s easy to buy imported foods, but back then it wasn’t—so we would make some heroic arrangements to have things sent to us from England by relatives, to have at this party. Boxing Day is an obvious holder from the pagan Roman Saturnalia master/slave inversion practices. It’s a day for us peasants! :-)
We have an Advent House and Advent Tree until Christmas Eve. Starting on the First Sunday in Advent, or 1 December if it’s earlier, we put up one Christmas decoration a day. 6 December is reserved for St Nicholas (with miter and staff). About a week before Christmas, we go to a farm and cut a tree, and set it up in the stand. No lights or ornaments, just the tree. After it is in the house for a day and the branches have settled, we decide which bit goes against the wall and where it needs trimming, and then put on lights and a star. The next day it gets some ornaments. Then it gets more. Instead of trying to do the whole thing in one day, which can be pretty stressful, we take our time. On Christmas Eve, we vacuum any needles that have fallen, put in the tree skirt, and add the train. The 1 December decoration is an Advent calendar that with sheep and shepherds and angels and so on, who velcro to the stable one per day until Jesus makes it to the manger on the 25th. (The kids worked out themselves that the oldest should go first in Year A, and the second in Year B, and the third in Year C, so it would be fair.)
There are four candles in the window, but on 1 Advent only one is lit, and then next week 2, and so on. Thus the front window tracks the Advent Wreath on the table.
The Christmas specials worth watching (Charlie Brown, the Grinch) we don’t watch until it’s actually Christmas, and then we take our time with those as well.
We take one day of Christmas to spend the entire day at Grandma’s with all the cousins; on Christmas Day itself, many of us have competing families to visit and so on, but once one realises there are 12 entire days to use, those overlaps can be easily worked around.
We turn on our house lights and put up our tree on Gaudete Sunday too, and leave everything going at least until Epiphany and sometimes longer. We have a special homemade advent calendar that looks like our parish church with windows marked from the 17th thru the 23rd. Each window has a symbol that matches a verse from “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” which we sing, adding the appropriate verse each evening. It’s one of our favorite traditions! We also recite Longfellow’s “The Three Kings” on January 6th.
We put up outside lights on Gaudete Sunday, but we wait until the morning of Christmas Eve to get our tree and decorate inside (other than our Advent candles, Jesse Tree, and empty Nativity scene). Besides making the day more meaningful, you can’t beat getting an 8 foot tree for $10! By the 24th, the guys on the lots just want to pack up and get home.
My husband is in the military and his command offers a choice between taking leave leading up to Christmas or from the 23rd until what usually is Epiphany Sunday. He takes the second leave period each year. It really does make a difference in our celebration.
We have, for about 16 years, given only about one gift for everyone on Christmas morning. Then the rest of the 12 days of Christmas, some one (or several someones) get a gift, or we go out and do something special (an experience gift). So Christmas really doesn’t end until January 6. This year I am going to have my four grandchildren who live nearby over for an evening, one by one, to make cookies of their choice. (Their mom is pregnant and cannot stand the smell of baking this year!)
We hang a simple grapevine wreath on our front door, adorned with a purple ribbon., and switch to a traditional lighted green wreath on Christmas. Decorations and tree come out on Gaudete Sunday (which seemed like torture for our kids kast year!). And they stay up until the 6th when we have a low-key epiphany celebration ... Which the kids call three kings day. We like Santa, but don’t play it up. ... Just enjoy the sort of natural make-believe with which each child embraces the idea. Some are born skeptics, other live right in the center of pretend ... and it doesn’t ever compete with the reason for the season ...
We have begun turning on our outdoor lights on Dec. 13, the feast of St. Lucy, since her name means “light.” We also put out the baby Jesus figures on Christmas eve or day. On Christmas eve, we change out the advent candles for white ones in the advent wreath and place a white Christ candle in the center. We continue reading children’s Christmas books through Epiphany. On St. Stephen’s feast day (the 26th), we once made a type of cookies called “rocks” since he was stoned to death… the feast of the Holy Family is good to do a family game night or go out to dinner as a family, or decorate gingerbread houses in remembrance of the holy family’s home in Nazareth… On Epiphany, we usually have a king cake, and the children get three small gifts: a gold gift (something handmade), a frankencense gift (something religious, like a new Catholic book), and a myrrh gift (something for the body, like body wash or lotion… this year, I actually found a handmade “Three Kings soap” on Etsy. I would love more ideas on how to extend the celebrating throughout the 12 days!
SiriusXM Satellite Radio deserves kudos for *not* shutting down all of their Christmas music stations on the 26th. Two of them, “Holly” and “Holiday Traditions” are continuing through January 2nd. I was listening to “Holly” on Tuesday, and they actually played some religiously themed Christmas songs amid all the Santa songs (I heard “The First Noel” by two different artists).
I grew up with the Advent wreath and calendar being taken down on the 23rd and the tree going up on the 24th, when we would put out luminaries to welcome the Christ child, have a fancy dinner, and go to Midnight Mass. We would open gifts from each other, leave out cookies for Santa, and wake up on the 25th to find he had left us presents under the tree and filled our stockings.
My wife grew up with a tree getting decorated two weeks before Christmas. Her family always went to Mass on the 25th, and they opened gifts from each other the night before, stockings before Mass, and more gifts from Santa and with extended family later.
Merging two traditions has been very difficult, because we are both very attached to how things ought to be done. We were wed on St. Lucy’s Day, the 13th, so we compromised for our anniversary by lighting candles in the window for the patron saint of Light and setting up Mary, Joseph, and the Angel in the creche (We add the shepherds and kings on their respective days). We keep the Advent wreath until the 23rd and only a few decorations, such as Christmas towels in the bathroom, get put out on the 13th. My wife feels the house getting merrier and I feel like Advent is still given pride of place.
Then we spend the Christmas Octave with our in-laws and return to school in January, ready to cut down and decorate a tree, which we keep up until Candlemas, Feb.2, the Feast of the Presentation (if it works for the Pope, it’ll work for us). We have our own special ornaments and NOT having a tree is simply not an option for my wife. Our stockings are still with our mothers-in-law, and we have not yet put out stockings of our own. Our toddler has one at each grandmother’s house. We’ll see how that unfolds next year.
On Jan.6 we bless the house, sprinkling holy water in each room, and mark with chalk over the front door. So I really enjoy reading about all these other people who honor the 12 days. I once had a Twelfth Night party, wherein we read excerpts from Matthew’s Gospel, Shakespeare’s Play, and Rumer Godden’s Holly & the Ivy, and then blessed the house. That was sweet.
The most important thing to do is keep holy the feast days within the season, Stephen, Holy Innocents, Holy Family, Mary Theotokos, Holy Name, Epiphany, Baptism (I choose to ignore the USCCB and observe Epiphany on the 6th) by going to Mass those days, esp. Holy Family and Jan 1st. One day, when the children are older, we will have a tree on the 24th and we won’t spend the octave traveling. But enjoying the scent of pine in the house through the month of January has its benefits!
I grew up with the Advent wreath and calendar being taken down on the 23rd and the tree going up on the 24th, when we would put out luminaries to welcome the Christ child, have a fancy dinner, and go to Midnight Mass. We would open gifts from each other, leave out cookies for Santa, and wake up on the 25th to find he had left us presents under the tree and filled our stockings.My wife grew up with a tree getting decorated two weeks before Christmas. Her family always went to Mass on the 25th, and they opened gifts from each other the night before, stockings before Mass, and more gifts from Santa and with extended family later. Merging two traditions has been very difficult, because we are both very attached to how things ought to be done. We were wed on St. Lucy’s Day, the 13th, so we compromised for our anniversary by lighting candles in the window for the patron saint of Light and setting up Mary, Joseph, and the Angel in the creche (We add the shepherds and kings on their respective days). We keep the Advent wreath until the 23rd and only a few decorations, such as Christmas towels in the bathroom, get put out on the 13th. My wife feels the house getting merrier and I feel like Advent is still given pride of place. Then we spend the Christmas Octave with our in-laws and return to school in January, ready to cut down and decorate a tree, which we keep up until Candlemas, Feb.2, the Feast of the Presentation (if it works for the Pope, it’ll work for us). We have our own special ornaments and NOT having a tree is simply not an option for my wife. Our stockings are still with our mothers-in-law, and we have not yet put out stockings of our own. Our toddler has one at each grandmother’s house. We’ll see how that unfolds next year. On Jan.6 we bless the house, sprinkling holy water in each room, and mark with chalk over the front door. So I really enjoy reading about all these other people who honor the 12 days. I once had a Twelfth Night party, wherein we read excerpts from Matthew’s Gospel, Shakespeare’s Play, and Rumer Godden’s Holly & the Ivy, and then blessed the house. That was sweet.
The most important thing to do is keep holy the feast days within the season, Stephen, Holy Innocents, Holy Family, Mary Theotokos, Holy Name, Epiphany, Baptism (I choose to ignore the USCCB and observe Epiphany on the 6th) by going to Mass those days, esp. Holy Family and Jan 1st. One day, when the children are older, we will have a tree on the 24th and we won’t spend the octave traveling. But enjoying the scent of pine in the house through the month of January has its benefits!
I grew up with the Advent wreath and calendar being taken down on the 23rd and the tree going up on the 24th, when we would put out luminaries to welcome the Christ child, have a fancy dinner, and go to Midnight Mass. We would open gifts from each other, leave out cookies for Santa, and wake up on the 25th to find he had left us presents under the tree and filled our stockings. My wife grew up with a tree getting decorated two weeks before Christmas. Her family always went to Mass on the 25th, and they opened gifts from each other the night before, stockings before Mass, and more gifts from Santa and with extended family later. Merging two traditions has been very difficult, because we are both very attached to how things ought to be done. We were wed on St. Lucy’s Day, the 13th, so we compromised for our anniversary by lighting candles in the window for the patron saint of Light and setting up Mary, Joseph, and the Angel in the creche (We add the infant, shepherds and kings on their respective days). We keep the Advent wreath until the 23rd and only a few decorations, such as Christmas towels in the bathroom, get put out on the 13th. My wife feels the house getting merrier and I feel like Advent is still given pride of place. Then we spend the Christmas Octave with our in-laws and return to school in January, ready to cut down and decorate a tree, which we keep up until Candlemas, Feb.2, the Feast of the Presentation (if it works for the Pope, it’ll work for us). We have our own special ornaments and NOT having a tree is simply not an option for my wife. Our stockings are still with our mothers-in-law, and we have not yet put out stockings of our own. Our toddler has one at each grandmother’s house. We’ll see how that unfolds next year. On Jan.6 we bless the house, sprinkling holy water in each room, and mark with chalk over the front door. So I really enjoy reading about all these other people who honor the 12 days. I once had a Twelfth Night party, wherein we read excerpts from Matthew’s Gospel, Shakespeare’s Play, and Rumer Godden’s Holly & the Ivy, and then blessed the house. That was sweet. The most important thing to do is keep holy the feast days within the season, Stephen, Holy Innocents, Holy Family, Mary Theotokos, Holy Name, Epiphany, Baptism (I choose to ignore the USCCB and observe Epiphany on the 6th) by going to Mass those days, esp. Holy Family and Jan 1st. One day, when the children are older, we will have a tree on the 24th and we won’t spend the octave traveling. But enjoying the scent of pine in the house through the month of January has its benefits!
This year it was awesome that we had a full four weeks of Advent. I am a Army Chaplain so I was not in a rectory or with family so Advent and Christmas was very different for me this year. First week I only had candles in the window and the Advent wreath. Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the Creche went out, without Jesus, and the Wisemen were on the other side of the room. Third Sunday, tree went up with the decorations but I had two sets of lights. The first were candles (not real) and then your normal ones. I only lit the candles ones till after the Midnight Mass, then all the lights were turned on. Next year I plan on having the star linked to the post midnight Mass lights. Of course, I download the album “The Great O Antiphons” for the final days and already had “King’s College Lessons & Carols” for Christmas Eve. I do something similar for the secular music. I begin the secular music during the O Antiphon period but try to stick with “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” “Home for the Holiday”, “Let it Snow,” etc—basically, secular stuff that hits on the waiting. No Chipmunks but a lot of Trans-Siberian Orchestra!!! I also do a countdown of sorts with the familiar Christmas specials I grew up with, ranging from Charlie Brown and the Rankin/Bass specials to “Christmas Carol” (George C. Scott version), and “A Christmas Story” to name a few. The culminating is the Midnight Mass with the Pope. So here is my bit to share and I will be taking in some of the suggestions I read here to add to my observances.
I’m sorry about the multiple posts. It kept telling me that I was spam and that my API key was invalid. I have no idea what that means, but it resulted in my trying repeatedly to submit the same comment. Sorry!
In our house, we don’t put up a “Christmas tree” until Christmas Eve. Instead, we get our real tree in the first week of Advent and decorate it purple (for Advent) with apples (reminder of Adam and Eve’s fall into sin). We don’t do any outdoor decorations (except purple ones) until the fourth week of Advent. My mom attempts to block out Christmas music until the 4th week, but that is hard to do since most radio stations start playing Christmas music at Thanksgiving. :P
As for Christmas itself, we don’t believe in “Santa Claus”. My mom taught us that it was St. Nicholas who left us presents. She also spreads our gifts out through the 12 days of Christmas. We each get our 3 St. Nick gifts on Christmas Day and then family gifts, parental gifts, extended family gifts, and sibling gifts are streched out until Epiphany.
There’s a big Christmas concert in our diocese on the eve of the Epiphany. There’s a parish that doesn’t have its Christmas “openhouse” until the third or fourth weekend of January. My house is usually decorated until at least February 2nd, Candlemas Day.(Sometimes later due to time constraints to take stuff down and put it away.) Ther are several countries that don’t even start to go caroling until Epiphany.
Lovely, lovely piece: I work retail, and this means Christmas decorations at work come down the day after Christmas, or at the least, by New Year’s Day. We’ve still got our Christmas trees (one big one downstairs, another smaller one in the upstairs) and Nativity scene up, so after a day in the cold of the retail world, I’ve got an island of light and joy to come home to. The Christmas Angel was always the gift-bringer at our house (I was terrified of bearded men as a kid, so no Santa for us), and we spread out our gifts over the 12 days of Christmas. Around Epiphany, the big tree comes down and we put up a smaller, wire-frame tree with colored lights, which I decorate with my mother’s *huge* collection of angel ornaments; that, as well as the rest of the Christmas decorations, doesn’t come down till February 2nd.
We have a lot of family from both sides spread over the region and over the years we have worked to spread out the Christmas gatherings so that we spend the chrismas season celebrating Christmas from Christmas Day through Epiphany. The kids love looking forward to all the celebrations (and I appreciate not having to rush from this reletive’s home to that one’s all on Christmas Day, as if that were the only day that mattered. The extended family has also found this practice useful (though they may or may not be Catholic) as it allow greater flexibility for travel, especially when family is coming from out of state. The decorations come down soon after the Baptism of the Lord, as usually the tree is a bit crispy by then. I had actually never heard of keeping the decorations up until Candlemas Day, though I suppose it does make sense in a way. But I like keeping with the liturgical seasons so the kids can see us celebrating with the church, not secular society.
When I was growing up, Christmas lights weren’t turned on until two days before Christmas, but that tradition changed once my siblings and I were old enough to argue! That tradition was changed to the weekend after Thanksgiving. Now that I am a father, it is the weekend after Thanksgiving. I hope my kids will love Christmas like we did growing up. Another tradition my family practices is getting a Maine Balsam Christmas Wreath. Each and every year we order one from Harbor Farm. Here is the link so you can check it out and maybe start another tradition of your own!
http://www.harborfarm.com/Christmas-Wreaths/products/62/
Thank you!
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give The National Catholic Register permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.