To retailers who started putting out Christmas merchandise in October, and radio station programming directors who are already playing “seasonal” music, and homeowners who’ve put out their holiday lights, even though it isn’t Thanksgiving yet.
I understand. I’m a Boomer too. I know that Christmas was the most wonderful, magical time of the year when you were a kid. It was for me, too. I, too, would love to recapture that feeling.
However. You’re not a kid anymore. You’re an adult, too beaten up by life to be taken in by glockenspiel music and colored lights. Especially when you strung those colored lights yourself.
You will never get the magic of Christmas back by making the holiday longer. You’ll only get it back by making the holiday deeper.
The people who invented Christmas actually believed that God became man. That means that all our highest aspirations, dreams and hopes are not fantasy, but fact, and that Ultimate Truth came down to hang out with us a while. And then died for us. And then defeated death.
When you get that, you’ll get Christmas back.
Just thought you’d like to know.
I saw some Xmas lights on the way home and thought perhaps those folks we combining Thanksgiving and Christmas because of family travel or family responsibility.
That’s no excuse of the radio stations though. I’d like to know who and how that decision was made.
There are 2 such stations here, according to a friend I talked to last night. I understand it’s becoming quite common.
A friend of mine said he pressed a preset radio button the other day and discovered the Christmas station. Our local Moody affiliate plays constant Christmas music within 14 days of Christmas, but I don’t mind that. I can’t stand having Santa Baby in my music rotation.
Yeah, “Santa Baby” is about the nadir. Though they’re always working to dig down lower.
Though I’m not Anglican, I admire their tradition of not celebrating Christmas until December 25. You know, when Jesus is actually born. The great celebratory push up until then and sudden drop off after makes no sense to me.
Are you sure the lights aren’t going up just because they don’t want to do it in three feet of snow?
I know the weather’s changed since I lived in Minnesota, but I REMEMBER what it was like! The only place in the country where most leave the lights up until spring.
At least it makes the bleak landscape a bit brighter!
Phil: That’s no excuse of the radio stations though. I’d like to know who and how that decision was made.
Ori: Follow the money. If people are in a Christmasy mood, advertisements would work better on them. Radio stations’ customers are advertisers, not listeners.
I personally suspect they’ll eventually push this story as an alternative.
Note: I wrote it back when I was an Atheist, but I don’t think it will be terribly offensive.
Robert: I see your point, and indeed some people up here just leave the lights up all year.
However, there’s no need to turn those lights on in October.
Most people don’t realize that Dec 25 is the first of the 12 days of Christmas, but people are all Christmased out by Dec 26.
Yeah, I think the whole festival would be kind of neat to observe (though the fast that traditionally preceded it, not so much). But that would have no benefit for retailers.
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me . . . what was it now?
Did those who celebrated the twelve days of Christmas also commemorate the Advent season for a few weeks prior to them?
And since we’re already talking about it, how do you celebrate Christmas meaningfully, putting Christ into Christmas as it were? I have made an effort at a Scripture-based Advent calendar with my children, but I don’t know how well I have weaned my own affections away from gifts, songs, and holiday cheer over the years.
As I mentioned, the Advent season was traditionally a fast like Lent. Not really festive at all.
Lars, You’re right, of course, unless they’re orange lights for Halloween like they put up here in St. Louis.
Bleeccchhhhh….
Well, one way to deal with Advent would be to learn some Advent hymns and fall in love with them. They are, actually, my favorite sacred music of the entire liturgical year: the best ones are eschatalogical (Charles Wesley’s “Lo, He Comes With Clouds Descending” is my all-time top pick, though “Wachet Auf” is pretty glorious, too).
Other Advent traditions which we observe with our children: a Jesse Tree (if you have young children, google “Jesse Tree” and “coloring pages,” go out and find a branch to put in a vase, and you have an ongoing craft/scripture project. We also do the traditional “O Antiphons” from the 17th-23rd of December. These are essentially the verses of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” sung in reverse order. A couple of years ago I made some ornaments, one for each O Antiphon, and we hung them in the window, one each day, and sang the relevant verse/verses — when we put our tree up, which we usually cave in and do around the 20th, we transfer the ornaments to the tree.
We get out the Nativity set but hide the baby Jesus away until Christmas Eve. We always start out having Mary and Joseph wandering through the house on the way to whatever spot is designated as Bethlehem, but they tend to get lost, and because we have more than one Nativity set, different Marys end up with different Josephs, so that’s all a little weird, but the right people usually end up in the right place in the end. We also set our Three Wise Men on a journey which will end at the Manger on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6.
We light the candles, do the calendar, etc. Advent is, hands down, my favorite season, and a gorgeous one to celebrate with children.
We also celebrate the whole 12 days, though we haven’t gone so far as to have 12 days of gifts or anything. But there are saints’ days which fall during that time, and it’s generally a time for feasting and joy which ends on the Feast of the Epiphany, which is also my oldest daughter’s birthday, so we always have a birthday celebration instead of a Twelfth Night party . . .
Anyway, Advent starts this Sunday — still plenty of time to get ready. It is a penitential season, though not quite such an austere fast as Lent, and filled with its own beauty and longing.
That sounds lovely, Sally.
Yeah, you pretty much have to fight the culture by BEING a culture. It’s the only hope.
(I should also add that we didn’t make up our culture by ourselves, out of things we had lying around the house. We’re Catholic, and it’s all pretty much straight out of the tradition — though any Christian can do any of these things, obviously.)