The eucatastrophe of Man’s history

December 26, 2012 By 8 Comments

It’s still Christmas and will be for a total of 12 days.  Jim Denney reminds us of what J. R. R. Tolkien said about it in his classic essay “On Fairy-Stories“:

JRR Tolkien, the creator of “The Hobbit,” once wrote that his goal as an author was to give his readers “the Consolation of the Happy Ending.” That consolation takes place at the point in the story when all hope is lost, when disaster seems certain—then Joy breaks through, catching the reader by surprise. In a 1964 essay, Tolkien called that instant “a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”

Tolkien even coined a word for the moment when the light of deliverance breaks through the darkness of despair. He called it “eucatastrophe.” When evil fails and righteousness suddenly triumphs, the reader feels Joy—”a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears.”

Is the Joy of eucatastrophe just a literary device for manipulating the reader’s emotions? No. This same sudden glimpse of Joy, Tolkien wrote, can be found in our own world: “In the eucatastrophe we see in a brief vision . . . a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world.” Evangelium is Latin for “good news,” the message of Jesus Christ.

Tolkien went on to compare the Christian Gospel, the story of Jesus Christ, to “fairy-stories,” the kind of fantasy tales (like “The Hobbit”) that produce the Joy of “eucatastrophe,” the consolation of the happy ending. The difference between the gospel story and fairy-stories, Tolkien said, is that the gospel is true: “This story has entered History and the primary world.”

“The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history,” Tolkien explained. “The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality.’ There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits.”

via JRR Tolkien, the star of Bethlehem, and the fairy-story that came true | Fox News.

HT:  Paul Veith

Filed Under: Christ, History, Holidays, Literature Tagged With: , 8 Comments

Merry Christmas

December 25, 2012 By 8 Comments

Dear readers,

I wish all of you the joy of the season and every blessing of the Christ child!

Remember:  Keep Christ in Christmas.  Keep “mass” in Christmas (by going to church and receiving Holy Communion).  Keep the “holy” in “holiday.”  Keep the day in holiday.  Keep St. Nicholas (the Trinitarian confessor) in Santa Claus.  And just keep Christmas.

Sincerely yours,

GENE VEITH

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 8 Comments

The first recording of a family Christmas

December 25, 2012 By 4 Comments

The Wall family Christmas of 1904 has been preserved on the equivalent of an early dictaphone.  The link gives more details, including samplings.  (Be sure to play the one of the 7-year-old singing, with his big finale.)

Curators at the Museum of London have discovered what they believe to be the first ever recording of a family Christmas.

They were made 110 years ago by the Wall family who lived in New Southgate in North London.

There are 24 clear recordings on wax cylinders which were made using a phonograph machine between 1902 and 1917.

Music curators say the sound quality of the music recorded is outstanding.

Cromwell and Minnie Wall had nine children, eight of whom appear on the recordings. All the recordings are bursting with vibrancy and life, according to Julia Hoffbrand who is the curator at the Museum of London who helped restore the recordings.

Wall Family

 

via BBC News – Curators discover first recordings of Christmas Day.

May you and your family continue this tradition, handed down from generation to generation, century to century, of having a Christmas celebration “bursting with vibrancy and life.”

Filed Under: Family, Holidays, Music Tagged With: 4 Comments

Jolly old St. Nicholas

December 24, 2012 By 20 Comments

The real Santa Claus, thought to have been a participant at the Council of Nicaea and to have slugged Arius for his heretical Christology:

HT:  Mary Moerbe

 

 

Filed Under: History, Holidays Tagged With: , , 20 Comments

Choice of music for Christmas Eve

December 24, 2012 By 4 Comments

Go to Lutheran Public Radio for round-the-clock Christmas music, starting today.  Here is the ad that shows what they are trying to do:

Filed Under: Holidays, Music Tagged With: , , 4 Comments

Eating for death vs. eating for life

December 26, 2011 By 38 Comments

Our church was not one of the 10% of American churches that cancelled Sunday services on Christmas day, I’m happy to say.  We had a wonderful service.  Pastor Douthwaite’s sermon was on the “great reversal” of the Fall of Adam and Eve that God worked through the gift of His Son.  Especially striking was something that I had never thought about:  Our fall took place when mankind ate the fruit of the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil.  So the reversal of this curse also involves eating.  We eat the fruit of the Tree of Life; namely, the body and blood of Christ crucified.

The Word who became flesh is flesh still and comes to you, for you, in that same body and blood today on this altar. And that final, dreadful part of the sentence once spoken to Adam has been reversed – and now the fruit of the Tree of Life is ours again! And so while Adam ate and died, for you and me it has been proclaimed: the day you eat of this, you shall surely live! This is My Body, this is My Blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sin. And we feast upon the Lamb of God. The flesh and blood of our Lord is truly the first – and best – Christmas gift.

And so the darkness of our sin is enlightened by His glory. The glory of the Creator dying for his creatures. The glory of the strong become weak. The glory of God in the manger. The glory of Jesus. The glory of the Word made flesh. The glory of God who gives Himself to us. Is this not a marvel?

But perhaps there’s even one more marvel for us this happy morning . . . that your Saviour didn’t just redeem you from your sin that you may serve God as a slave, or be an indentured servant, or to be on parole to see if you’ll live up to it – the Son of God came to make you a son of God. A full son! With all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto! For that’s what His forgiveness does. It doesn’t just restore part of the way, but all of the way. . . .

Today, marvel at that. Rejoice with the angels. Kneel with the shepherds. And take the body and blood of Jesus not in your arms, like Mary, but in your mouth, and depart in peace. Your sins are forgiven, dear child of God; your exodus complete.

via St. Athanasius Lutheran Church: Christmas Day Sermon.

Filed Under: Christ, Church, Holidays Tagged With: , , , , 38 Comments

Keep the “mass” in Christmas

December 23, 2011 By 74 Comments

Last time Christmas fell on Sunday it came out that a number of churches had decided to cancel services, which provoked some controversy.  I haven’t heard of churches doing that this year, whether because they have all come to their senses or because it has become no big deal.  (Does anyone know of churches that have cancelled Sunday services?)

The reason given was that if people don’t have to go to church they can spend more time with their families, and Christmas, after all, is a family holiday.  Do realize that this way of thinking secularizes Christmas just as much as crass commercialism.   Christmas is about Christ.  Specifically, it is about worshiping Christ and receiving Him sacramentally–hence the “mass” in “Christ+mass.”

So I urge you to go to church on Christmas.  Traditionally, this was the day that even casual Christians–a.k.a. “Christmas and Easter Christians”–would go to church, some of whom could be reached.  So more serious Christians certainly should go, if at all possible, whether Christmas falls on a Sunday or not.  Christmas Eve services count, since holy days technically begin after sunset of the day before, but I also urge you to receive Holy Communion if you can, the sacrament being traditionally offered on that day even in traditions that don’t celebrate it often.

The whole point, however you conceive this happening, is to not only celebrate the gift of Christ, but to receive the gift of Christ.   You don’t just celebrate the fact that people gave you presents.  You open them.

Filed Under: Christ, Church, Holidays Tagged With: , , 74 Comments

“Upon Christ’s Nativity”

December 23, 2011 By 14 Comments

I continue my custom of offering you a Christmas poem, poetry being “a trap for meditation.”  Here is one that I just discovered by the Welsh Anglican cleric Rowland Watkyns (1662):

Upon Christ’s Nativity, or Christmas

From three dark places Christ came forth this day;

From first His Father’s bosom, where He lay,

Concealed till now; then from the typic law,

Where we His manhood but by figures saw;

And lastly from His mother’s womb He came

To us, a perfect God and perfect Man.

Now in a manger lies the eternal Word:

The Word He is, yet can no speech afford;

He is the Bread of Life, yet hungry lies;

The Living Fountain, yet for drink He cries;

He cannot help or clothe Himself at need

Who did the lilies clothe and ravens feed;

He is the Light of Lights, yet now doth shroud

His glory with our nature as a cloud.

He came to us a Little One, that we

Like little children might in malice be;

Little He is, and wrapped in clouts, lest He

Might strike us dead if clothed with majesty.

Christ had four beds and those not soft nor brave:

The Virgin’s womb, the manger, cross, and grave.

The angels sing this day, and so will I

That have more reason to be glad than they.

via Rowland Watkyns: “Upon Christ’s Nativity”.

Filed Under: Christ, Holidays, Literature Tagged With: , , 14 Comments

Whose job is it to keep Christ in Christmas–and in sermons?

December 15, 2011 By 74 Comments

Issues, Etc. host Todd Wilkens has posted a provocative point on his Facebook page on the perennial “keep Christ in Christmas” controversies.  Since I’m one of the ten or eleven Americans not on Facebook, I’m indebted to my friend Michael O’Connor for showing it to me and for asking Todd for permission to post it here:

I don’t expect the culture to keep Christ in Christmas; that’s the church’s responsibility.

Besides, the “Christ” of culture bears no resemblance to the Christ we find in scripture. So it’s probably best that the culture leave Christ out of the holiday.

What does disturb me is that many of the Christians worried about keeping Christ in Christmas have little problem with Christ being left out of the preaching they hear the rest of the year.

Filed Under: Christ, Church, Culture, Holidays Tagged With: 74 Comments

The Elf who stole Christmas

November 30, 2011 By 84 Comments

Far more subversive to the true meaning of Christmas than the secularizers is the “naughty or nice” legalism of “Elf on the Shelf”:

Who can resist the holiday fun of scaring the children into good behavior? Ask any of history’s most efficient dictators — they’ll tell you. Christmas just isn’t Christmas without the naughty-nice punishment paradigm. Where would this holiday be without its good old-fashioned behavioral paranoia? Charles Dickens may get all the credit for this, but do also consider George Orwell.

That’s what makes “The Elf on the Shelf” so ingeniously successful. Cooked up in 2005 by a mother-daughter duo in Georgia, “The Elf on the Shelf” began as a children’s storybook that came packaged with a benign little elf doll — “a pixie scout” in the tale — togged out in a cute red leotard.

As the story goes, once a family gives their elf a name and places him on a shelf or mantel, he is endowed with magic powers. Beginning around Thanksgiving, the pixie scout watches everything that goes on during the day. At night, he flies back to the North Pole and gives Santa a full account: who behaved, who didn’t.

The elf returns to your house in the dark of morning, before everyone gets up, positioning himself in a different spot from where he was before, so that the children have to find his new vantage point. Also, very important — if anyone in the house touches the elf in any way, he’ll lose his magic. And if that happens, then we’re all royally screwed come Christmas Eve. In other words, it’s no longer Santa Claus who knows if you’ve been bad or good. It’s a whole army of his pixie-scout elves. (All a parent has to do to sustain the fantasy is remember to move the elf each night after the kids have gone to bed.)

via CBS’s ‘Elf on the Shelf’: Unwarranted Christmas surveillance techniques – The Washington Post.

Look at the message of the “naughty or nice” Santology:  You will get a gift, but only if you are good.   Gifts must be deserved.   The gift of the Christ child, though, is precisely to those who do NOT deserve it.

Filed Under: Holidays, Theology Tagged With: , 84 Comments