Wait for Christmas!

by Dr Raymond Perrier · December 3, 2016

Last year on December 28 I wished a shop assistant, “Happy Christmas”. She looked horrified — not because she was a Muslim or a Jehovah’s Witness, but because she thought that Christmas was all done and dusted.

Her supermarket had been selling mince pies since Halloween and decking the halls with boughs of (plastic) holly since at least early November. Who was this absurd man still wishing people “Happy Christmas” long after it was all over?

I was so tempted to point out to her that Christmas had only just begun. I wanted to tell her—or better still sing to her — that this was in fact the 4th day of Christmas, and that my true love had just sent to me four calling birds, three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.

The look on her face suggested that she was not in the mood to be educated.

For the Christian liturgist, Christmas is a season that begins on December 25 and then runs for 12 days (to the night before Epiphany) or, in some traditions, for 50 days until Candlemas (the feast of the Presentation on February 2).

But for the ad man, the sales merchandiser and the average shopper, Christmas starts when the first tinsel appears in the aisles, and then finally runs out of steam on December 24. Because then the start of our Redemption gets eclipsed by the end-of-year sales.

So what about the ordinary Christian: you or I? Do we just give in to the commercial line and celebrate with everyone else at the wrong time of year? Or do we try to hold the purity of the liturgical line?

The latter would be hard indeed. It would require us to abstain from feasting and even drinking during December, since after all Advent is a time of preparation, not of celebration. It would require us to resist the temptation of mince pies, carol singing, and putting up the tree until most of our friends have lost all interest in it. Do we have the strength of character for that?

But how do we honour Christmas? One way would be to make a personal or family commitment to avoid the worst excesses of premature Christmas in so far as we can.

Thus, even if others insist on serving us Christmas delicacies, we could keep them out of our own houses until at least Christmas Eve. We could wish people a “Merry Advent” when they try to wish us a “Happy Christmas”. We could even avoid sending the cards out until after December 25.

These ideas might seem a bit silly. Here is one with a better chance of succeeding.

The tradition of the Advent calendar appears to be one of the few ways in which December is still marked as a preparation for the festival rather than the festival itself. We open a window every day (chocolate treats not essential but a nice addition) and also reveal slowly a Christmas image. There are some rather wonderful digital calendars available now too.

How about taking that same idea a step further, especially if you have children? Instead of putting up all the decorations in one go early on, and then being thoroughly bored by them by the time Christmas actually happens, what about putting them up in stages?

Start with a tree but absolutely no decorations: a chance to admire it and, in case it is actually made of wood, enjoy its smell. Then at different points through December, perhaps tied in with the Sundays of Advent, add the decorations in stages: first the lights, then the tinsel, then the old decorations, then perhaps some new ones, and finally on Christmas Day itself the angel or star on the top.

Such an approach gives us a chance to reflect on the slow emergence of Christ’s coming—light in the darkness—and create a sense of expectation and anticipation. It can also provide a shared ritual for a family or group of friends as we travel slowly with Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.

Let me offer a final suggestion: to mark two different festivals: One is a riotous, frivolous, commercial mid-winter (or here mid-summer) festival dedicated to eating, drinking and merriment. Let’s call that one Yuletide after the pagan deities of Europe. This festival ends on December 25.

That date then happens to be the start of the second festival. It is marked by a special religious service, and by feasts which are more about sharing than consuming.

The break from work allows us to give time to ourselves, to our families, and to long-forgotten pursuits. And it gives us a contemplative time to prepare for the end of one year and the beginning of the next.

Since this is a crossover moment, we can think of it as an X and so call the festival Xmas (remembering that the X was an early code for Christians to write about Christ or Xristos).

And so now, in the first part of December, we can spend some of our time joining our debauched friends in their celebration of Yuletide. But we can also set aside some quality moments to prepare for our secret celebration of Xmas.