Advent
December 13, 2010, 8:15 am
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
I fear that this is a little like King Canute ordering the tide not to come in…, but here are two pieces that regret that the season of Advent has been swallowed up by Christmas: carols being sung even before Thanksgiving, the trees up and decorated weeks before the feast (and coming down right after it). I won’t mention those who think the twelve days of Christmas are counted off before the feast, with some confusing them with the last days of shopping before!
The bishop of Salt Lake City devoted a pastoral letter to Advent. And USA Today published an article on the debate about Advent and Christmas in which Kathy Pluth is quoted.
Is your Christmas tree up already?
Not until Dec. 17th.
I claim a mental health exception to this discipline: My tree –artificial, with big, multicolored lights–although without decorations –goes up Thanksgiving weekend. It comes down around the beginning of Lent.
It’s a winter tree–not a Christmas tree–and its point is to combat the Permacloud that settles over SBN from November until April–and the deep gloom that comes with the Permacloud.
I don’t put the manger up and the rest of the decorations up until later, though.
Advent wreath with candles on dining room table beginning 1st Sunday of Advent. It satisfies the desire for piney smell and is so much easier to get together than the Christmas tree.
That was purchased this last Saturday, hauled home, and is now in one of the outdoor wells of our apartment building. Usually it goes up the 23rd and is decorated the 24th. Comes down Ash Wednesday, or thereabouts.
Not until Christmas Eve. I stay out of stores so I don’t have to hear the music. Then again, I am not an eager Christmas consumer or particularly sentimental about Christmases past. Though sometimes I miss Uncle Dick, who used to load us up on grasshoppers (creme de menthe and other stuff) and then try to win our Christmas money off us in euchre games.
Cathleen, they sell SAD lights if you have not been able to adjust to the low-light conditions of a South Bend winter, but the tree sounds nice. I was born and raised in northern Michigan, and I have the opposite problem–I use room darkener shades in the summer because I can’t stand more than 10 hours of daylight without getting agitated.
Margaret, I don’t know where our Advent wreath got to, so I bought four pillar candles and put them on a white plate on the dining table. It looks nice! We have to have a fake tree b/c of my son’s asthma/allergies. It’s a drag.
“comes down Ash Wednesday”
You’re kidding, right?! Mine is down the day before Epiphany or I turn into an ogre.
Well the Christmas tree lover (Peter F. Steinfels) throws himself into its care and decorating. He believes that his labors should be long admired. And why not? It’s fun on Valentine’s Day to admire an ornamented pine tree in the living room. Did I mention that the tree is just a bit smaller than the one in Rockefeller Center?
Back to Advent: we append to the usual grace before dinner a few Advent songs and antiphons. Yesterday, a crowd was here and I must say it rendered a rousing, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel; assuming there were a few pagans among them, I thought it all came together in a good way. After all, you don’t have to be a Christian to be in a waiting mode.
I encourage everyone to say the confession (BCP) as the candles are lighted, but I can’t get any takers. Mostly Raber and the boy comment on whether I bought big enough candles to last until Christmas and how long they should be left burning so they don’t run out.
I try, but I’m afraid Christmas is just not my thing.
Now Ash Wednesday and Good Friday …! There are two observances that fits my dark and guilt-ridden soul! Some days I don’t know if Jesus really cares. But I’m ready to believe with alacrity that we didn’t have sense enough not to kill him. Which is why this is my favorite Christmas song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Uh4U0VPASE
My preference would be a Christmas Eve tree decorating. But as a parish liturgist, there’s simply no time that day for home activities. December 17th is an adequate concession. Given the relatively few number of religious ornaments, that’s not too bad.
On the bright side, there is little to no competition between Christmas and the secular sphere from December 26th to Epiphany.
As for how long, a good friend of mine lamented Iraq War I and left his spectacular hand-carved scene up in his great room all year back in 1991. He said he needed it, and the world needed it. I agreed.
December 17th might be a compromise, with the “O-Antiphons” guiding the way. And surely someone can tell us where to find them sung in Gregorian Chant on the Internet?
My family of origin was proudly of the no Christmas tree before Christmas Eve school. My wife, not so much (one of many personal examples for discussion when I do premarital counseling). Now we have kids at school, we sometimes travel during the Christmas break, so setting up the tree on Christmas Eve would mean enjoying it for about 36 hours, then allowing it to dry out and burn the house down while we’re gone.
As for carols, no, of course, we don’t sing them in church during Advent which means we, who gave them to the world, don’t sing them together until Christmas Eve, by which time we’re all pretty much sick to death of them. Then we try to do it again on the first and second Sundays of Christmas, but we feel foolish. It’s very sad! I talk a good game, but my gut is pretty much programmed by the culture I live in.
But commercialism is an amplifier, not the inventor of this. Weren’t Laura and Mary Ingalls excited about anticipating Christmas, even though they weren’t going to receive a ton of stuff after watching it advertised on television? Do you suppose their little prairie church waited until Christmas to sing carols? Were the great old english carols actually not sung in the streets until Christmas day? I think we sometimes romanticize the glorious age when they celebrated the 12 days.
OK, well, if Mahalia isn’t good enough …
Here’s a bunch of kids explaining the O-Antiphons:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuN2ue-SNGg
And here’s a link to the Dec. 17 antiphon. Other links to the left:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6zaiZxJIpU
… er to the right. Sorry. I’m hogging. Off now.
Yes, our Christmas tree does go up Thanksgiving weekend. I guess we recognize the preparatory aspects of Advent in that, throughout the season, the pile of gifts beneath it grows gradually and steadily as Christmas approaches (with the final avalanche happening on Christmas Eve after the kids are in bed).
Btw, these quotes from the article (by a seminary professor!) left me running away screaming into the night:
“On the other hand, “it’s just a bummer to go to church week after week and never hear carols until Christmas Eve,” notes David Lose, a professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul and author of Making Sense of the Christian Faith. “I think we ought to lighten up a little.”
“Partly, this is a practical matter. Pushing Christmas songs off until Dec. 24 doesn’t leave much time for enjoying them — or teaching them to children, Lose notes, who will thus learn their Christmas songs as mall background music. Plus, “the whole church year calendar is a remembrance,” he says. “Jesus was born 2,000 years ago.” Christians can celebrate that in Advent, or July if they want.”
There is a church in our community (a Lutheran church, as it happens, so this may be more of Professor Lose’s influence :-)) who give out yard signs to their congregation that proclaim “Christ Is Risen!” A fine idea, except that they start sprouting in front yards long about the 3rd Sunday in Lent.
The Catholic parish whose borders overlap that Lutheran parish is now passing out yard signs to *its* congregation saying something like, “Come celebrate the Triduum”. All in all, a new spin on the liturgy wars, I guess.
Triduum: always good to keep a little Latin in the yard sign. Ave!
In my family, Christmas trees always went up on December 24th, though wreaths might emerge on doors a bit earlier. Here in Vermont, though, where the sun will vanish for large parts of the next few months, it is not unusual to see wreaths (and Christmas lights) lasting almost up to Easter.
About music: how could we get our Muzak outlets to play great Advent music — e.g., Emmanuel, Sleepers Wake (Wachet auf), On Jordan’s Bank, etc. etc.
The Christmas tree in St. Peter’s Square went up on December 3.
O tempora! O mores!
A beautiful tree in St. Peter’s Square! And how fitting that the Pagan symbol came from Luson, where a church dedicated to St. Nicholas (!) was constructed on the site of an old Pagan shrine.
My little tree went up a week ago. As a child of the ’40s, I still think trees should wait until Christmas Eve. (Like in “The Bishop’s Wife”.)
No tree until Christmas eve, or possibly the day before if it looks like the tree sellers are getting packed up and ready to go back to Canada.
For Advent I’ve been prefacing grace at our evening meal with the beautiful alternate collects from the 1998 translation of the Roman Missal. (We’ll never hear them in church, so why waste them.) http://www.whatifwejustsaidwait.org/1998missal.htm
I’ve also used some sources from the internet, such as excerpts of prayer from this interesting ecumenical service in New Zealand.
http://www.liturgycentre.org.nz/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=Ec85ZWlcjCc%3d&tabid=2146&language=en-NZ
We have held the line against listening to any Christmas music at home during the Advent season. I have a very beloved set of recordings of Christmas music that I’ve collected over the years, and it’s my great delight to take them out and play them once Christmas truly arrives. If I hear “Santa Baby” at Macy’s it doesn’t spoil my season of anticipation!
Speaking of interesting recordings, I took the trouble to obtain a new one before Advent began (so I could listen to it!). It’s “La Noche Buena” by the San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble (it’s marketed through World Library Publications), Christmas music of colonial Latin America. They’ve reconstructed instruments used, and reproduced a mix of indigenous and European music that’s sort of familiar-sounding and then… you realize this is a whole different thing, and one which we don’t hear much. It includes a traditional Incan song in Quechua, and a Nahuatl song using Tlaxcalan rhythms, not to mention songs in Spanish, Portuguese, West African, and Latin. I’m really impressed with the musicianship of this group as a whole, and although some of their historical reconstructions are fairly speculative, the sound they produce is gorgeous.
Yesterday Pope Benedict advocated a spirituality of patience, referring to the beautiful second reading:
Quoting a passage from today’s reading of the Letter of St. James – “Be patient therefore, beloved, until the coming of the Lord” – the Holy Father said: “I believe it is important, in our time, to underline the value of constancy and patience, virtues which were part of the everyday baggage of our forebears, but which seem less popular today in a world which exalts change and the capacity to adapt to new and diverse situations. Without detracting from these aspects, which are also human qualities, Advent calls us to strengthen that inner tenacity, that resistance of heart which enables us not to lose hope as we wait for a good that is late in coming, but to await it – indeed, to prepare for its arrival – with confidence”.
Christmas tree and all the trimmings go up on the First Sunday of Advent.
Actually had this conversation with my wife years ago. Her rationale was that, in spite of what the Church teaches liturgically, her Christmas memories growing up were terrible and she wanted to turn that around for when we had a child. So she starts decorating early to make Christmas a fun time. Maybe a bit of an overcompensation but it is fine.
As far as Advent prayers and wreath. Yes we try to do that. If you have any suggestions on how to stop my almost teenage daughter from rolling eyes, sighing and the arguments that ensue just prior to the prayers – I am all ears. :) TV can be shut off for at least a half hour and I do try to stay joyful.
I actually did not know that Christmas ended in January. I always associated that with Ukrainian “Christmas”. I remember growing up with lot of Ukrainian kids an we always envied how they had TWO Christmases while we only had ONE.
Jean Raber:
You wrote, “I encourage everyone to say the confession (BCP) as the candles are lighted . . .” What does BCP mean?
“As a child of the ’40s, I still think trees should wait until Christmas Eve. (Like in “The Bishop’s Wife”.”
Yes. Well, Loretta Young had Cary Grant’s visage to brighten the dark days.
When I was very young, and we were living in Brooklyn, there was no sign of a tree in our apartment even on Christmas Eve – but for economic, not theological reasons. We weren’t exactly in the CEO economic class, and my dad had learned that late Christmas Eve – actually, after midnight – the tree sellers slashed their prices. So he’d set out around 1 a.m. in search of a tree, and then he and my mom would be up till all hours getting it decorated so that, when I awoke, it would be there (Santa Claus had brought it, I was assured) in all its glory.
BCP = Book of Common Prayer (Episcopalian). As we await the birth of Christ, it seems like a good season to “clean house” and think daily on what we have done and what we have left undone for our neighbors. It helps keep the more commercial aspects of the season at bay.
(The wording is similar to the confession said in the Mass, but just different enough so I still have to read the Catholic version so I don’t lapse into the Anglican one.)
I still use the BCP for personal devotions as well as the rosary. I was happy to learn that Dorothy Day kept the BCP nearby even into her old age. (She was raised an Episcopalian albeit an indifferent one.)
Teen-agers and their rolling eyes: Over the years we have found that other adults who Just love the Advent wreath, the singing, the candles, etc., and loudly say so can dent the adolescent indifference!
Something like this with prayers before meals afflicted our (long-gone) teenagers, who would argue that we shouldn’t foist our prayers on people who didn’t pray. At one such, I piped up and asked our guest if they would mind. “No, not at all.” We did pray. And then, the guest went on about how wonderful it was, etc….
My parents were small business owners and Christmas Eve was THE “black Friday” of the year for them. By the time the store was closed at about 10 pm, a couple of celebratory drinks were had with the staff, and we staggered home to get ready for Midnight Mass, there was no time for a tree. Leaving church at about 1:30 am and then going to the local restaurant (it was a VERY small down) to have black-eyed peas and ham hocks meant a very late arrival home.
We were too busy on Christmas day getting ready to either host or take food to a family gathering, so no tree then, either.
Trees mean nothing to me. Exhaustion can cancel out many a tradition and the memory thereof. To this day, however, I associate black-eyed peas (the dish, not the “musicians”) and ham hocks with Christmas.
A lovely Advent post and thread—thanks to all!
Advent wreath with candles on the dinner table, with the first candle lit Saturday evening for the 1st Sunday of Advent accompanied by the traditional Advent grace at our house—singing the first verse of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel”. (It’s short and it’s “what we always do”, so the teenagers join right in.)
The (extensive by now) Christmas music collection came out of storage, and it’s rare that there’s not at least 2-3 hours of music played in the house each day from the beginning of Advent to the end of Christmas. Certain CDs (e.g., Mervyn Warren’s “Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration, The Chieftains’ “The Bells of Dublin”) are typically held in reserve until Christmas Day.
Electric window candles went up last week, as did the front door wreath. Lights wrapped around the bannister and porch rail went up last Saturday (because the weather was good). This coming weekend we’ll go buy a tree (from the same guys we’ve bought it from for the last 20 years) and decorate it. Each ornament has a story, and each story will be told (even if the teenagers groan).
The creche goes up next Sunday (with the baby Jesus not appearing until Christmas morning). As Christmas cards arrive in the mail, they get hung around the living room. The liturgical/devotional police might disapprove, but it works to help us pray through Advent and Christmas.
I get the tree on Christmas Eve (tradition and, as others point out, trees are very cheap then) and we keep it up until Three Kings. I have a losing argument with my husband every year; I want a fake tree (fire safety and why kill a tree?) but he insists on a real one. The creche (we have two) came out Thanksgiving Weekend. The twinkling lights running around the living room ceiling, I keep up all year. Feels kind of festive.
Our Christmas tradition dates from the years we lived in West Berlin, Germany, from 1980 to 1989. Our German friends introduced us to the live program of Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge, broadcast each Christmas Eve at 3:00 GMT. As guests came to our open house, the small apartment was filled with the prayer and song of the day. This tradition remains with us, as our son listened on Christmas Eve while he was stationed in Korea and then in Iraq, as our daughter was in Morocco as part of the Peace Corps. Today they are in safer places–Nashville and Washington, DC, but we still come together each Christmas Eve, wherever we live, to listen to the live broadcast of A Festival of Lessons and Carols (see NPR scheduling). Thank you for this wonderful post!
Our creche–one of those wooden Playschool type things we got for our son when he was little to encourage him to engage with it–could come out whenever someone wants to find it and set it up. Because it gets set up on the floor or coffee table, the cats end up batting the figures around like hockey pucks all night, and whoever gets up first has to find all the firuges and put them back.
Sadly, we have the only Baby Jesus I’ve seen with fang marks.
I guess cats celebrate Christmas in their own way.
Peggy (or anyone) — We got a wreath for Advent this year, candle a week thing and all, yet it’s dry as tinder and going out tomorrow for fear of the consequences. How do you keep them fresh for a month?
We do tree week before. Too much to do with fish dishes Christmas Eve, Mass, gifts Xmas morning, and then mega-Italian family meal the 25th.
Here’s a question: Who is staggering into Mass on the 26th?!
PS: Here’s an argument for making the period between the 25th and the 6th the new Advent. Much more contemplative.
PPS: Here’s an Advent icon:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/12/13/ultrasound-jesus-holiday-reminder-or-anti-abortion-tactic/
DG: Dry Wreath: Did you buy a fresh wreath??? Of course, they get drier, but our is still not shedding needles (third Sunday); you can also take your plant sprayer ( you do have one, don’t you?) and spray the wreath which keeps it damp. Don’t let the candles burn through the whole dinner (if that’s when you light it); you can blow them out after the hors d’oeuvres have been served. It is possible to replace candles from the first or second week, and I have done this, though it is frowned upon by others (unnamed). And it’s always possible to “dispose of the wreath” after the fourth Sunday but it is sad to do that before the tree goes up.
Mass on the 26th!! Now there’s a challenge.
Christmas in Berlin (above): We once celebrated Christmas in Bonn and Live Candles were on the tree and lit!!! It was terrifying… Anyone else ever experience this?
Ten or fifteen years ago, I was in Würtsburg, Germany, just around this time. I loved the booths set up in the town square with all sorts of Christmas gifts, statues, and goodies for sale. And for the three winters I was in Rome, there was all the activity in the Piazza Navona, with similar things for sale in similar booths, with the singers down, it was said, from the Abruzzi. And an added treat one day: I found myself standing next to Gina Lollabrigida.
As to the American ‘Commercial’ christmas… BAH HUMBUG!
No Christmass music in our church until Christmass Eve – and then, it is not appropriate until the Midnight Mass (at whatever time that may be) and the announcement of the birth of Christ. Then, Christmass music until Epiphany.
There is so much wonderful music written for the time of patient waiting, where we empty ourselves and wait to be filled by the coming of Christ. Why rush it! If people ask me to program Christmass music prior to Christmass Eve, I ask them if they’d also like the “Star Spangled Banner” and “America the Beautiful”… when they look at me confused (which they always do) I ask them why not prepare for July 4th starting now… then they get the point. They may not be happy with the point, but at least they understand my reasoning.
As to the commercial christmas music played hither and yon, 24/7 and starting prior to Thanksgiving – I do not shop commercially and only listen to public radio, so I am quite safe from it.
PS… Silent Night is ONLY sung at the last Vigil – which in my church is not celebrated with brass and timpani, but with a capella voices leading the assembly in a quiet recognition of the special nature of the creche – that God came to earth as a lowly human in a backwater town in Judea with no hoopla… I save the Angels and ‘Drummer Boys’ for Christmas Day and beyond!
Hope your Christmas is Peace-filled and that you are not distracted from focusing on the Christ Child by tacky or self-important music!
I was in Cologne for Christmas in 2005, to hear the music. The Christmas market was wonderful, with young people all around. The churches were freezing, but the music was fantastic.
This hymn was ubiquitous: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBabfFoHAfE
Kathy, I’ve spent Christmas in both England and in Paris and the masses were packed, the music superb, and, of course, the buildings were cold yet magnificent!
You don’t hear Christmas music in European churches prior to Christmas…
Wouldn’t it be great if we could all go to Christmas Masses overseas! Every year!Wouldn’t it be great if we celebrated the old European Tradition of ‘Little Christmas’ where the presents are distributed on Jan 6 (along with the Magi’s gifts to the Christ Child)…
Nice dream….
“Christmas in Berlin (above): We once celebrated Christmas in Bonn and Live Candles were on the tree and lit!!! It was terrifying… Anyone else ever experience this?”
Peggy, yes, in a New York City apartment no less, by an Austrian friend for whom it was an indispensible taste of home. She lit the candles only for very short periods of time and sprayed the tree with water frequently. Terrifying indeed! At the same time, completely serene in a way that electric light can’t replicate. (We had to keep still and focused too; no swanning around the room while the tree was lit!)
David, sad to say, I see a lot of dead wreaths for sale. They may look pretty, but if they aren’t pliable and you can’t smell the sap, they’re already dry when you buy them. For an Advent wreath to last, it has to be pretty fresh to start with.
My wife put out three Christmas creches this Sunday morning (she collects them) and a small artificial tree with lights but we had a good reason: Sunday afternoon we hosted around 40 undergraduate theology majors for a brunch deciding that they needed a touch of the season before final exams which are going on this week. We have held this brunch every year for over twenty years and I admit to a touch of nostalgia in turning over the hosting next year as I retire in May. At Christmas, however, we will celebrate in a postage sized apartment on the lower east side of New York with our two daughters who share the apartment and, more importantly, are employed and off my payroll! Who could ask for more?
Two ways to keep an Advent wreath fresh.
1. You can buy a ceramic wreath dish that has four candle holders and a little circular trough to put the greens in. You can keep them watered that way. I had one long ago, but SOMEONE dropped it, and I’ve never been able to find another one.
2. In Michigan, when we had a fresh wreath, we put it outside on the screen porch when not in use. It’s usually below freezing for much of Advent, and that keeps it fresh.
Water spritzing sounds easier.
My Gramma had the old Christmas tree candle holders from when she was a girl. They were tin, had clips on them with reflectors behind them. She lit one one time and turned off the lights, so we could get the general idea. She said the tree was only lit once, on Christmas eve, when the tree was fresh, for about an hour.
But this is the way things are really done:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1909243034?bctid=53156488001
I like the falalalala guy! I will spare everyone the inevitable comparisons with the Trolololo Man and not link there.
I’m reminded of a wonderful sermon several years ago by our pastor to the effect that the first “Advent” was not a quiet, contemplative season—and neither are most pregnancies!
There’s a lot to do to get ready for the birth of a baby—in addition to everything else that still requires doing. (The cows still have to be milked, the dishes still have to be washed, the factory shift still starts at the same time each day, the commuter train leaves at the same time….)
In addition to all the things the expectant parent(s) want to do to get ready for the baby’s birth, there are all the additional things that others want or expect: baby showers (with gifts wanted and unwanted), feeding advice—bottle or breast?, grandparents-to-be who want things done just the way they did them…or totally different from how they did them, friends with childbirth horror stories, strangers who have suddenly acquired the right to walk up, touch your stomach, and say any fool thing that comes into their heads.
So, maybe this year we could just try to pray our way through and with all of it: the quiet moments and the mall traffic, the Advent wreath lightings and the over-the-top Christmas decorations, the Lessons and Carols and the 24 hour cheesy Christmas radio stations.
It was a better sermon than I’ve explained, and it’s helped me through more than a few tense moments in the past few years.