Keep the Wretched Feast

Today begins the short quick march to Advent and the beginning of a new church year, which means you will want to be rustling up your advent candles and your copy of Let Us Keep the Feast or ordering a new one if you’ve lost it.

So yesterday was Halloween/Reformation Day, and because they’ve gone by and the Internet doesn’t care any more, I really have no business blogging about them. I should obediently turn my attention to the next crisis/event, but, because this does mark the gateway to the season of excessive feasting, I feel I might have some short words.

First, let us distinguish between two kinds of feasts. Or should I even carry on with the assumption that any of us know what a feast is? If you don’t know, buy that book and let it explain it to you. For my purposes I differentiate between Feasts That I Want To Celebrate and Feasts That Are Foisted Upon Me.

Feasts That I Want to Celebrate
This is a short list. It includes Sundays, Holy Week (not technically a feast), Advent (not technically a feast), St. Nicholas Day, and Reformation Day.

Sundays are feast days, obviously, because we remember every week that Jesus rose from the dead and trampled down death by death. However purgatorial a Sunday might be, it’s worth the trouble of making room for it, of getting there early and hearing the sermon twice. Without Sunday, the rest of the week has no proper frame or meaning. Incidentally, this is why no one should be shouting at you about your hypocritical Sunday smile or the bad attitude you bring with you to your pew. Did you come? Did you get out of bed and mush yourself into something uncomfortable and then endure all the people and things and music? Well, then you win. If some pastor or anybody tries to make you feel bad they are missing the point. Anyway, that is another post.

Advent and Holy Week are obviously not feasts but they take work, and for me, it’s the kind of work I like. It’s spare, it may been exhausting, but I love it. I’d always rather been penitent than rejoicing but that’s just because I’m a jerk. Still, if you have trouble thinking about Advent and Holy Week, it might help to put them in the feast category so that you remember to do anything about them.

St. Nicholas I love because it’s not expected. I wish we could have it instead of Christmas. Again, it’s spare. It’s not celebrated by anybody else. It’s just me and not the world, marking one bright, cheerful moment as the year heads towards its demise.

And Reformation Day, well, it’s just because I’m contrary. The reformation was one of the biggest contrarian moments of all time, but also, since it’s the same day as Halloween, there’s no contest.

Feasts That Are Foisted Upon Me
This category comprises everything else. Yay me. Birthdays, national holidays, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, everything.

Whenever a holiday arrives that I don’t feel like celebrating, I say to myself, “By the rivers of Babylon, yea, we sat down and wept when they required of us a song.” Sometimes the world requires a song, requires that you get up and jump through all the hoops, that you arise to meet the demands and expectations of everyone beyond your own self. It might be your children needing to be made a fuss over, your husband who deserves a nice dinner and an evening free of complaint, a cultural expectation that you cheerfully join in to “have fun”.

Yesterday it meant toggling between school and everyone’s desire to get candy but no one being able to find anything to wear or someone to be. Or their shoes. Instead of quietly and methodically doing the work that we always have to do, we also had to add in the hassle of a half hearted dress up and a cold walk around the neighborhood. Well, and church, but the church is warm and the people are nice. As the evening roiled on I figured out I was definitely getting a cold, and decided there was no point trying to have a good time. I angrily Instagramed the children and wandered around picking candy wrappers off the floor. “You can make me dance,” I muttered, “but you can’t make me like it.”

Still, You Can’t Chuck It
No matter how irritated a feast may find you, you can’t really chuck it. You may be able to pair down, to do less, but eventually there is going to come a time when you have to step up and do all the hard work of rejoicing, outwardly at least. You’re going to have to cook and clean and bake and find outfits and fall into bed so tired you almost can’t breathe. Doesn’t matter which celebration, doesn’t matter if you chose it or it was given to you, your body and your soul have to get through it one way or another.

If it helps you can think of Christmas and Easter. Both bear the stark, spare marks of joy and pain, of being required to sing a song. Christmas because it may be fun for us, but it wasn’t all dancing and candy for Mary and Joseph. Angels from the realms of glory on one hand, barn animals on the other. Unmistakable joy tempered by the dark looming evil of the world and Herod.

Or take Easter. There’s the Passover feast, the party, the wine, the lamb, the big gathering. But just over the rising dawn there is the blood sacrifice, death, forsakenness. Then you wake up two mornings later and everything’s ok again. But that means still roasting another leg of lamb and rubbing your face over and over with the fatigue of having been in church for three hours the night before. So much joy. So much tired.

When the world requires of you a song, pick up your wretched harp and sing. It’s ok, tomorrow you can shove it in a cupboard and get back to the usual work that’s enough to keep you from ever sitting down. But know that some day the feast and the song will not be tainted and marred by fatigue or sorrow. The harp won’t be put away. The oil, wine, and gluten will never run out or fade away. So until then, keep the wretched feast.