Christmas: It ain't over 'til it's over!

It's the fourth week of Advent which means that we are nearing the crescendo of seasonal anti-Christmas court cases, documentaries, and stories in the media. Even as Christmas shoppers support local commerce by spending more money than they probably should on presents, any attempt at spreading holly jolly by a salutation of "Merry Christmas" at the checkout line is, more often than not, met with a smirk and a condenscending "Happy Holidays," or "Seasons Greetings." One can feel a bit downtrodden under the constant barrage, a bit like walking uphill against the wind.

Fortunately, Catholics have options to help tune out secular noise. First and foremost, Advent's the start of a new liturgical year, and God blessed the Catholic Church with a depth of traditions, practices, and liturgical worship that far surpasses any cultural or judicial trends and/or fashion. True, many of the most beautiful, inspirational, and reverent examples were suppressed during the era of the Second Vatican Council changes to the liturgy, but they still exist. They've just been misplaced. All we have to do is find them again, and fortunately, the wind is changing and the vine is ever growing. Often it takes growing a little to realize that "where-you've-been" is essential to understanding "who-you-are."

In Advent, we have awaited the coming of the Lord for nearly four weeks. Soon, we will celebrate Christmas. While the day commands special celebrations, feasts, the giving of presents, Mass, and a multitude of family traditions, it should also be of comfort and good cheer that this day, Christmas Day, is only the beginning of the Christmas season.

The 12 Days of Christmas begin with Christmas Day and extend through the Feast of the Epiphany, the feast commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles; however, liturgically speaking, the Christmas season would extend to the octave of the Epiphany, January 13th, as well. And, in a spiritual sense, the season can be discerned in the time extending through to Whitsunday, or the Purification of the Virgin Mary on Feburary 2, the feast commemorating the day on which our blessed Mother, following the Jewish custom, obediently underwent purification in the temple baths forty days after having given birth.

The Christmas season is filled with feasts that, if kept properly, greatly enhance the season's Christian nature:

• Christmas Day (Christ's Mass): the Nativity—December 25
• Feast of St. Stephen: the first martyr of the Christian church—December 26
• Feast of St. John the Evangelist—December 27
• Feast of the Holy Innocents: commemorating the martyrs of King Herod's attempt to kill the Christ—December 28
• The Feast of Thomas Becket, martyr (killed in his cathedral in defense of the Church from the encroachments of civil power)—December 29
• The Sunday within the Octave of Christmas
• Feast of St. Sylvester, pope (during the time when the Church obtained freedom from Roman persecution in the 4th century)—December 31
• The Octave of the Nativity: the Circumcision of Our Lord in the Extraordinary Form calendar and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, in the Ordinary Form calendar—January 1
• The Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus—January 2 (or the Sunday between The Circumcision and Epiphany)
• The Epiphany—January 6
• The Feast of the Holy Family—first Sunday after Epiphany
• The Commemoration of the Baptism of Our Lord which marks the end of the Christmas cycle—January 13
• The time after the Epiphany: the time leading to the Purification of the Virgin Mary on Whitsunday*

So what if the department stores and malls morph back to business-as-usual by December 26th? When it comes to the Christmas season, I'll invoke Yogi Berra and spread the news, "It ain't over 'til it's over!"

*this list was created through a combination of memory, my parish calendar, the St. Andrew Daily Missal (1956), and an excellent list and summary of the season found in this article at the fisheaters web page .