Despite the best efforts of the politically correct to drown the word Christmas under a tide of “Holiday,” and—very sadly—the wonderful Revels troupe in Cambridge, Massachusetts dropping the “C” word from its name in favour of “Midwinter,” Christmas is again nearly upon us. Although Christendom and its Kings and Emperors are long gone, a shadow of the old Occident lives again every year: only Communist China, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Israel, and a scattering of Muslim countries do not honour the birth of Christ on either December 25 or January 7. In each of those where it is a legal holiday, there are a whole network of age-old customs—in and out of the home—marking the feast; there are some even in countries where it is not. In most places, Advent of the St. Philip’s Fast is a buildup to it, celebrations continue to a greater or lesser degree until the Epiphany, and in western countries the Season lasts more or less until February 2 and Candlemas.
In the Anglosphere, Old Christmas has a particularly poignant meaning for the conservative. It was, as such tales as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight remind us, as hugely celebrated a festival as any in Medieval England—as it was throughout Christendom during the Ages of Faith. But although the great feast managed to survive the Protestant Revolt, it went down to defeat with the King’s cause in the wars of the Three Kingdoms. As a Royalist ballad of 1646 puts it:
To conclude, I’ll tell you news that’s right,
Christmas was killed at Naseby fight:
Charity was slain at that same time,
Jack Tell-truth too, a friend of mine,
Likewise then did die, roast beef and shred pie,
Pig, Goose and Capon no quarter found.
Yet let’s be content, and the times lament,
you see the world turned upside down.
The Puritans in both Old and New England outlawed it; it was during this time that the character of Father Christmas arose in Cromwell’s domain, as the personification of the old spirit of the day, locked in combat with his Calvinist enemy. Although in time he became a gift giver—and was in recent decades basically co-opted by our own Santa Claus—he was a powerful reminder of the England that was.
Christmas did not recover well from the damage done under Cromwell in England, although Father Christmas managed to rule over a number of out of the way spots. But he was given a great shot-in-the-arm by Sir Walter Scott, that reviver of so many Medieval goodies. Scott, in turn, passed the Yuletide bug on to a visiting Washington Irving, who—having already written of the doings of St. Nicholas at Christmas in old New Amsterdam—was very keen to write down the old and/or revived Christmas customs at the Manor House of a friend of Scott’s. Appearing in Irving’s ultra-popular Sketchbook (which in addition to the Christmas writings gave us Rip Van Winkle and the Headless Horseman in separate pieces), they attracted an Irving fanboy named Charles Dickens. He wrote his first of many stories of the season, A Christmas Carol, while Irving’s fellow New Yorker Clement Clarke Moore turned out A Visit from St. Nicholas. Modern Christmas has never looked back.
Regardless of the criticisms that one might make of that modern Christmas, even at its most commercial, it has several layers—each of which has something important to teach us. This is especially true now when the news in Church and State is so depressing. Oddly enough, Sir John Betjeman’s poem, “Christmas,” is a helpful guide to three of the four of these. Let’s look first at the first four stanzas which address the “public face,” as it were, of Christmas:
The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.
Here we see the public layer of Christmas—not only in the countryside, provincial towns, and London of Betjeman’s experience, but everything from the lighting of the Christmas Tree in New York’s Rockefeller Centre to the innumerable Glühwein stands throughout Central Europe’s Christmas markets to the many Christmas specials on television and on and on. Even allowing for the tastelessness, commerciality, and secularism of so much of it, nothing can obscure the reason for it all. Every nation, province, and municipality where it is a holiday is honouring—however obliquely—the birth of Christ. But this is only the outer layer. We can enjoy it if we choose and add it to our store of joy—or despise it; either way, it is merely the external background to the season. Alongside it all are public activities of a more personal nature: depending on where we are, Advent Carol Services, Las Posadas, innumerable Christmas concerts and plays, Boar’s Head feasts, Madrigal Suppers, and Christmases past as reenacted at various historic houses and open-air museums.
There is the second, deeper layer, and that is the realm wherein we celebrate the great feast with our friends and family. This layer Sir John describes thusly:
And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.
And is it true? And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?
And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant.
This is the realm of our own Christmas Trees and ornaments (the latter of which so often are bound up with family history), Nativity scenes, Christmas Eve and Day dinners—so often with very specific foods from our own cultural backgrounds, gift-giving (and tales for the children of various preternatural gift givers), and the church services we attend (if any). These come, of course, ever so much closer to the heart of it all, with constant references, however glancing, to the reason why across the planet we do all these things.
That reason Sir John addresses in his very last stanza, which is astonishing in both its depth and brevity:
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
Here we arrive at the meat of the issue: that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity hypostatically united with true and actual manhood—body and soul—and was incarnate of the Holy Ghost by the Blessed Virgin Mary, herself conceived without Original Sin. Then commenced that extraordinary career of 33 years which culminated with His Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension into Heaven—but shall only end when He returns in glory. Moreover, He returns to unite Himself with the faithful on a daily basis on every altar whereon is offered the Eucharistic Sacrifice by a priest in the Apostolic Succession. For all that so many of those who celebrate Christmas for whatever reason may disbelieve these things, it is nonetheless why we have this feast. Despite that disbelief—and even the disgust which these Divine realities arouse in sum—we poor human beings are nevertheless drawn to them in however a cloudy fashion, as the sole escape from the dilemma of fallen humanity.
This in turn brings us to the fourth layer of Christmas which Sir John does not address, but which each of us must, namely our reaction to the astonishing Truth that it is not that Christmas was, but that it is. That we must all allow ourselves to partake of it somehow or other, sooner or later. If we embrace that Christ Child, Who was and is man in Palestine, and lives to-day in Bread and Wine, then we shall truly be able to live up to Ebenezer Scrooge’s aspiration: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”
Washington Irving wrote:
Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christmas awakens the strongest and most heartfelt associations. There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, and lifts the spirit to a state of hallowed and elevated enjoyment. The services of the church about this season are extremely tender and inspiring. They dwell on the beautiful story of the origin of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that accompanied its announcement. They gradually increase in fervour and pathos during the season of Advent, until they break forth in full jubilee on the morning that brought peace and good-will to men.
All true! But how much deeper and richer for us if we attend such liturgies not as a mere participant or spectator, but as a partaker in that very flesh and blood that was born in Bethlehem?
If we do, then all four layers of Christmas are revolutionised. As mentioned, we are no longer mere witnesses of the inspiring services of the season, but “very members incorporate” of the Mystical Body of Christ. Our family customs shall retain every bit of their nostalgic and heartwarming nature—both for our kin and those friends whom we admit to our (or who admit us to their) family circle. But such customs also are elevated into the realm of the sacred—part of the Liturgy of the Domestic Church, as it were. The Advent carols and other external observances will similarly continue as important community observances but also have—for us—an added hint of the sublime, or more than the sublime. Even the most flippant department store Santa or “Seasons’ Greetings” sign on a public building shall in some way become a true reminder of the mystery and beauty of the solemn feast of the Nativity.
Of course, we should do our part in return. Let us try to keep Advent as penitentially as we can (and also enjoy the Carol Services and other things proper to Advent), and to the degree we are able, let’s avoid being too Christmassy until the Eve itself. But then, let our joy break out for the twelve days, and keep them as well as we can—enjoying whatever observances proper to them we can attend, through the Epiphany. We can keep the tree up until then, and some sort of decorations until Candlemas Eve. Even if we are alone, we can avail ourselves of the Church’s Liturgies which are and ever have been the spirit of the Season. Instead of the “Blue Christmas” that so often strikes those who keep the day and the season purely for the good feelings of the time, but ignore (or are ignorant of) the reason for those feelings, we shall be at the very centre of the feast. If enough of us do so, then the map of countries that keep Christmas shall become the foundation of the Christendom that is to come.
