No doubt about it, 25 minus 12 does equal 13.<\/p>\n\n
Christmas is Dec. 25th. Lovers of carols and party games also know this season has 12 days, packed with pears, gold rings, birds and various kinds of gentry, musicians and domestic workers.<\/p>\n\n
Do the math. It\u2019s easy to see why many leaders of newspapers, television networks, shopping malls and other cultural fortresses annually deliver some kind of \u201cTwelve Days Of Christmas\u201d blitz beginning on Dec. 13.<\/p>\n\n
But there\u2019s a problem. There really are 12 days of Christmas and, for centuries, church calendars in the East and West have agreed that they begin on Christmas and end on Jan. 6, the Feast of the Epiphany.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cSomebody needs to teach Bryant Gumbel and all the other Powers That Be some church history. They keep getting it wrong,\u201d said Father Patrick Henry Reardon, a philosophy professor and priest at St. Anthony\u2019s Orthodox Church in Butler, Pa. \u201cIf saying that upsets people, so be it. Orthodoxy has been in the business of upsetting people for centuries. \u2026 But there isn\u2019t a bit of doubt that the 12 days of Christmas come after Dec. 25.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Journalism\u2019s bible \u2014 the Associated Press Stylebook \u2014 is agnostic on this matter. It merely notes that Christmas is a federal holiday observed on Dec. 25 or on \u201cFriday if Dec. 25 falls on a Saturday, on Monday if it falls on a Sunday.\u201d There are no entries for the penitential season of Advent, the four weeks preceding Christmas, or Epiphany.<\/p>\n\n
The latter feast \u2014 the name means \u201cmanifestation\u201d \u2014 probably began in the second century. In the East, this initially included references to the birth of Jesus, along with other signs of the incarnation. Meanwhile, the Western church in Rome developed its own Nativity feast and timed it, for various reasons, to co-opt the date used for pagan celebrations of the Winter Solstice or the feast of Sol Invictus, the \u201cUnconquered Sun.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
A sermon by St. John Chrysostom in 386 A.D. notes that the East had recently begun celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 and, about the same time, the West adopted Epiphany. This liturgical exchange created a 12-day celebration, a sacred and secular festival after the quiet season of Advent, or \u201cWinter Lent.\u201d However, note that Advent does include one festive date \u2014 the Dec. 6 feast honoring St. Nicholas of Myra.<\/p>\n\n
Different cultures celebrated in different ways, but the basic season \u2014 Advent, Christmas and Epiphany \u2014 remained intact. The Protestant Reformation complicated matters and, in the New World of America, the Puritans actually banned Christmas celebrations. Later, waves of immigrants arrived with their religious traditions, especially Italian Catholics and German Lutherans. But this did little to change the civic and commercial nature of the American season. Another pivotal event was the 1822 publication of \u201cA Visit From St. Nicholas,\u201d written by a Clement Clarke Moore, a powerful New York Episcopalian.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cActually, the Dutch already had brought us a secularized St. Nicholas and everything that went along with him,\u201d said Evelyn Vitz of New York University, author of \u201cA Continual Feast,\u201d a cookbook and theological commentary on the Christian calendar. \u201cBut you throw in this amazing mythology created by Moore\u2019s poem \u2014 this kind of jolly, pagan elf up on the roof \u2014 and \u2026 you end up with an entire season that has been commercialized and stripped of its larger Christian context.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The big question: What can parents and churches do? Meditations on centuries of Christian tradition can easily be drowned out by the clamor of popular culture. Americans clearly prefer the rites of Madison Avenue to those of Rome or Jerusalem.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWe live in this culture. Our children live in this culture. We can fight, I guess,\u201d said Vitz. \u201cWe can go so far that we make everybody in our families so miserable that they want to quit being Christians. But it is clear that we can\u2019t accept business as usual. We need to recapture a sense of time and a sense of the sacred. We can start by insisting that the church\u2019s calendar really matters.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No doubt about it, 25 minus 12 does equal 13. Christmas is Dec. 25th. Lovers of carols and party games also know this season has 12 days, packed with pears, gold rings, birds and various kinds of gentry, musicians and domestic workers. Do the math. It\u2019s easy to see why many leaders of newspapers, television […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n