www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Christmas lights

Dear Friends,

My neighbourhood is ablaze with Christmas lights.

I'm just wondering about the appropriateness of "lighting up" with the Nativity Feast still some ways away.

What are our Eastern traditions in this regard?

Alex

Alex,

If you don't mind a non-Eastern response, I wanted to add my 2 cents.

Among Roman/Latin Catholics, Christmas should be celebrated after the birth of Jesus. Even though we don't fast at this time, Advent is supposed to be a time of waiting and quiet contemplation for the birth of our Lord.

In the Christmas rush, it is very difficult to find time for quiet contemplation.

Christina

Dear Christina,

Thank you for your sincere thoughts!

It's O.K. you aren't Eastern!

I suspect many in my own parish aren't either!

God bless you!

Alex

I wonder if this rush to put up Christmas lights betrays the desire of people to celebrate this feast for a prolonged period of time.

I've often wondered why the Christmas season isn't celebrated as long as, say, Easter. There is Christmas, and then the feasts between that and 1 January, and then Theophany. After Theophany, Christmasy stuff pretty much stops liturgically, if I'm not mistaken. And then, after a few weeks of that stop, the celebration of the Entrance of Our Lord into the Temple is celebrated, and is hardly noticed by most.

Funny, the time from Thanksgiving to Christmas is about that long.

Why do our Churches seem to stop liturgically celebrating these mysteries sometime after Theophany, instead of having a full forty days of celebration until 2 February? Perhaps there would not be such a rush to decorate trees and houses, to have Christmas parties, and all the other things if Christmas was not just "twelve days", but forty?

Hi:

Like Christina, not Eastern but...

I think that something has to mark the beginning of the Advent season. If it's something personal and private such as fasting, fine. If it's something you actually share with the neighborhood, that's fine as well.

My family does this by decorating our home for the Advent/Christmas season precisely on the First Sunday of Advent (well, we start on Saturday actually). This goes regardless of this Sunday's proximity to Thanksgiving, and actually I prefer it when the two events are not in the same weekend.

The center piece of our decorations is a tradition we have from home: The Nativity scene. This year we got a wonderful new set at Costco to replace the Playmobil one we've used the previous two years.

Yes, Playmobil, I'm sure you've seen the Nativity and Magi sets. They are pretty good and quite a didactic tool. The old Playmobil set is still "working", although missing a couple of secondary pieces, but now on a side table behind our dining table, instead of the main table in the living room.

Of course the Baby Jesus is placed on the scene only after we come back from Mass on Christmas Eve (well, the coming back *should* be on Christmas day already, but the "midnight" Mass is usually much earlier than midnight).

We also set up a Christmas tree, which we try to keep simple, and free from Winter-But-Not-Quite-Christmas adornments (no snow-people, rein-deer, Santa Claus, etc.)

We do put some lights outside as well.

On top of this, we put an Advent Wreath, which we light every Sunday Evening with some prayer and reflection on that Sunday's readings. This year we're having some friends over for the lighting of the wreath. It is the first time this tradition includes non-family members and this first Sunday it went very well, I think.

Shalom,
Memo.

Interesting these different ideas.

Of course in my house we do nothing
The streets are ablaze now and some of the houses have started doing things - but it's usually later in the month. Oh apart from the first Christmas card which arrived today !!

At Church we do nothing until after the 17th December [ when the Church starts really looking forward to the actual day. We now have a Vigil Mass for Christmas at 7pm which is intended for young families and the oldies who do not want to be out in the dark. Midnight Mass - well it is Midnight with Carols starting at 11.30 so that Mass will start at midnight

The Christmas trees in the Sanctuary [ no I do not approve - but they are gifted and decorated for us - so we graciously accept] usually go up as late as possible - about the 23rd if we can manage it, and the Church itself is decorated on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.

And Oh yes - the Church is in darkness for the carols with teeny lamps for the Cantor and Reader until the Gloria when we burst forth with bells a-ringing and all the lights go on and the Choir and congregation singing their hearts out. Wonderful - not forgetting the newest and smallest Server carefulyl carrying the Baby Jesus to the Crib.

Christina, what you said is not absolutely accurate. That depends very much on our ethnic and national traditions. I am Mexican, and for us the most important day of celebration of christmas is the 24th dec at midnight (not the 25th like in USA), when the familly gather together and we have christmas dinner with typical food. Religious people attend Mass that day (Misa de Gallo for Catholics, or Midnight Vespers for Orthodox), the hour of the mass has been fized so that people can attend the Vigil and then go home for night meal. The 25 religious people go to Mass (some go 24, some 25) and then there's a dinner with familly too (specially those who couldn't come the previous day, ans some friends visit).
We have christmas trees but the traditional thinbg is the Bethlem or "Nacimiento" the scene of Christ birth, and as Memo said, we put baby Jesus there the night of Christmas (24 dec), not before like the rest of the figures.

Dear Alex,

I know in Ukrainian Canada the lights on Parliment Hill are kept on until January 8.

Are the people in your neck of the woods still celebrating this festival of lights three years later?

Just curious

Steven

In the Ukrainian tradition on Sviaty Vechir(Christmas Eve), some children travel around their village communities with torches, sparlers, and candles and spread grains and seeds on their travels(This is the custom in farming communities). They perform Christmas Carols for their neighbors and wish them a prosperous new year and abundant harvest for next year. The neighbors usuually give the children a small donation for this.

Besides this tradition I cannot really think of anything that can compare with our western penchant for Christmas lights.

SLAVA ISUSU CHRISTU!
SLAVA NA VIKI BOHU!

I know my Baba would have had a fit if we put the Christmas tree up before Dec 23 and no candles in the windows until Dec 24.

Now we do put candles in the window for Mikulasa.

It is custom in Moravia and some parts of Bohemia to hang a star with 16 points with a lighted candle in it outside the home at the beginning of Advent.

In our church, we have a JOURNEY TO BETHELEHEM Calendar for the little ones. Each Sunday, they are called up to help move the Mary and Joseph on step on their journey to Bethlehem. We also have a Vespers & Divine Liturgy on Christmas Eve just for the children so they can carry in the figures for the Creche. One of the older girls carries in the Ikon of the Nativity.

Wish us luck, this year we are having an Christmas Flower sale. We're asking for donations of poisettas for the Church. We did this at Easter and got over 70 plants and made a nice sum for the Church too!!

mark

The Moravian Church ("Unitas Fratrum") in America is based in Bethlehem, PA, and you find these "Moravian Stars" all over the place in Eastern PA, among people of all denominations and ethnic backgrounds. We have one at my house just because it looks pretty.

Let me add my two cents:

The West is all about preparing for something by celebrating it in advance. The East is all about waiting and preparing by saving the celebration until you hear the actual good news. This would make an interesting thesis for a sociological study of the history of celebrations in the East and West. Alex...?

Daniil

You know what is really sad. In our neck of the woods, in the so called Bible Belt. Oh I hate to even say this. Christmas day, by that evening Christmas trees are lying on the street to be picked up, by the day after the parking lots are starting to fill up where they recycle trees.

Our bretheren have no understanding of the season of Christmas. Once the nativity is done that is it, all the lights are gone outside and inside, it is sad.

I wonder if baby Jesus cries?

Rose

Dear Friends,

Well, well, and I thought there wouldn't be much response on such an issue! Was I wrong! (Happy to be, in fact!).

The Moravian Church uses a 16 pointed star? That is the ancient Star of Vergina of Alexander the Great that quickly became a symbol of the Cross in some areas of Greece and elsewhere.

Where could one obtain such a star? (The Moravians also honour John Hus as a saint, as does the Polish National Catholic Church - I've done an Akathist to Hus!)

Canon Daniil and Qathuliqa Mor Ephrem are correct, the North American context has exploited Christmas and use lights et al. to whet people's appetites for shopping!

Even "Santa Claus" is actually the Coca-cola version.

The period of advent fasting has been defenestrated (thrown out the window).

There was an advent tradition of children putting up some decorations on the Christmas tree every day from Dec. 1st until the 25th, again a celebration of anticipation.

My old employer put up her decorations on Christmas Eve, nomatter what - it was considered wrong to celebrate when one was fasting.

We have lost, as Qathuliqa points out, a sense of the 40 days of the Nativity that extends until the Feast of the Meeting of Our Lord in the temple.

The first three days of the Nativity are the most sacred, followed by the other nine leading up to the Baptism in the River Jordan.

There are three "highlights" of the Nativity in the East Slavic tradition with the "Holy Supper" celebrated on Nativity Eve, the Eve of the Circumcision (secular New Year's Eve) and the Eve of the Epiphany.

The Armenian Church follows the original tradition of the Church by celebrating Nativity, Three Kings' Day and the Theophany on January 6th (or January 18th if you are an Armenian living in Israel - the Armenian Church there did not do the necessary adjustment of the Julian Calendar at the beginning of the 20th century, so they celebrate the Epiphany on January 18th rather than on the 19th as we Old Calendarists do).

The feast of the Theophany is most important, some say even more important than that of the Nativity since the Theophany is a feast of the Holy Trinity and its icon an icon of the Holy Trinity.

The fact that we celebrate Christ as a fully grown man on the Feast of the Theophany doesn't mean the celebration of His Nativity ends. The liturgical tradition of the Eastern Churches pay no respect to time and by February 2/15 we again see Christ as a baby coming to the Temple.

Qathuliqa Mor Ephrem makes another interesting and important point - why the differential noted in the celebrations of Christmas and Easter or Nativity and Pascha?

I think this is because we have less of a problem relating to a little Child in a manger than we do to the Man He would become, hanging, badly wounded, on the Cross - and then bursting forth, alive again, from the Tomb.

The former doesn't seem to challenge us as much as the latter does. The latter really requires a faith commitment that is life-changing, that changes us, in fact, from onlookers to people committed to Christ - or not.

For me, the Christmas Tree is a symbol of the Tree of the Cross.

Our Byzantine tradition celebrates the Crucified Christ "in the pine, the cedar and the cypress."

These three types of trees were, by tradition, used in making up the single Cross - as prophesied by the Prophet Isaiah.

In celebrating the Baby Jesus, we should not separate Him from the Cross. This is why I place an icon of the Mother of Perpetual Help on my Christmas tree and why my wife and I use pine, cedar and cypress in our Christmas decorations as well.

Happily, we have all three trees represented on our front lawn in our new home!

Happy Feast of the Entrance into the Temple - for all Old Calendarists!

Alex

Spasi Khristos, Alex.