Mack Hall
Every year some folks take up their crayons and write querulously to the newspapers to demand that Christ be returned to Christmas, as if the newspapers are somehow at fault because Christmas is not what the writers of letters to the editor think it ought to be.
The real irony is that for much of Christian history Christ was not in Christmas because there was no Christmas at all.
Christmas as a Feast of the Church was formally established by Pope Julius I in 350. Even then our poor, ignorant, superstitious ancestors only went to church on Christmas to worship God, and failed to buy masses of made-in-China stuff.
Over time, European nations slowly developed the concept of the twelve days, keeping Christmas from the 25th of December until the Feast of the Epiphany, or Three Kings, on the 6th of January. This worked well in agricultural societies in cold Europe because unless Sven and Gunter wanted to throw snowballs or hunt wolves or count icicles or something there wasn’t a whole lot to do in mid-winter except stay indoors next to the fire.
While Martin Luther was rather fond of Christmas – and was devoted to the Blessed Mother, too – other reformers said “Bah, humbug!” to Christmas and forbade it under penalty of law. In England and in the colonies Puritans and their spiritual descendants, including Baptists and Methodists, were sternly opposed to the celebration of Christmas as Romish superstition. To this day some evangelical congregations will not open the church doors when Christmas falls on a weekday.
In Scotland, Christmas was banned for over four hundred years, and not restored until 1958. 1958. Not 1658 or 1758 or even 1858. 1958. Put Christ into Christmas? Nae, laddie, ye’d better not be thinkin’ such evil thoughts.
Christmas as we know it is pretty much an invention of Charles Dickens, who imagined a merrie old English Christmas that never really was and wrote it into his books. Dickens’ Christmas is little more than some vague, fuzzy good feelings and some innocent partying, although he does allow his characters to walk to divine services on Christmas morning.
Christmas trees are a German tradition (someone will bring up the pagans at this point, and I say that if the pagans thought well of trees, good for them) Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha remembered the Christmas trees of his youth and popularized them in England. American anglophiles followed the lead of Victoria and Albert, and Christmas trees became a symbol of Christmas in the English-speaking world late in the 19th century.
Christmas was and is a Feast Day of the Church, a day in which the Incarnation is realized. Its other main purpose seems to be to serve as an institutional inadequacy for grumpy people to fault.
Well, grumpy people, that’s all right. Perhaps we do eat more than we should on Christmas, and buy too much stuff, and indulge our children more than we ought to, but it’s all a great deal of fun anyway.
"Let the children have their night of fun and laughter,let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play.Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasuresbefore we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us,resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring,these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritanceor denied their right to live in a free and decent world.And so, in God's mercy, a happy Christmas to you all."
-- Winston Churchill, 1941
Every year some folks take up their crayons and write querulously to the newspapers to demand that Christ be returned to Christmas, as if the newspapers are somehow at fault because Christmas is not what the writers of letters to the editor think it ought to be.
The real irony is that for much of Christian history Christ was not in Christmas because there was no Christmas at all.
Christmas as a Feast of the Church was formally established by Pope Julius I in 350. Even then our poor, ignorant, superstitious ancestors only went to church on Christmas to worship God, and failed to buy masses of made-in-China stuff.
Over time, European nations slowly developed the concept of the twelve days, keeping Christmas from the 25th of December until the Feast of the Epiphany, or Three Kings, on the 6th of January. This worked well in agricultural societies in cold Europe because unless Sven and Gunter wanted to throw snowballs or hunt wolves or count icicles or something there wasn’t a whole lot to do in mid-winter except stay indoors next to the fire.
While Martin Luther was rather fond of Christmas – and was devoted to the Blessed Mother, too – other reformers said “Bah, humbug!” to Christmas and forbade it under penalty of law. In England and in the colonies Puritans and their spiritual descendants, including Baptists and Methodists, were sternly opposed to the celebration of Christmas as Romish superstition. To this day some evangelical congregations will not open the church doors when Christmas falls on a weekday.
In Scotland, Christmas was banned for over four hundred years, and not restored until 1958. 1958. Not 1658 or 1758 or even 1858. 1958. Put Christ into Christmas? Nae, laddie, ye’d better not be thinkin’ such evil thoughts.
Christmas as we know it is pretty much an invention of Charles Dickens, who imagined a merrie old English Christmas that never really was and wrote it into his books. Dickens’ Christmas is little more than some vague, fuzzy good feelings and some innocent partying, although he does allow his characters to walk to divine services on Christmas morning.
Christmas trees are a German tradition (someone will bring up the pagans at this point, and I say that if the pagans thought well of trees, good for them) Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha remembered the Christmas trees of his youth and popularized them in England. American anglophiles followed the lead of Victoria and Albert, and Christmas trees became a symbol of Christmas in the English-speaking world late in the 19th century.
Christmas was and is a Feast Day of the Church, a day in which the Incarnation is realized. Its other main purpose seems to be to serve as an institutional inadequacy for grumpy people to fault.
Well, grumpy people, that’s all right. Perhaps we do eat more than we should on Christmas, and buy too much stuff, and indulge our children more than we ought to, but it’s all a great deal of fun anyway.
"Let the children have their night of fun and laughter,let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play.Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasuresbefore we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us,resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring,these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritanceor denied their right to live in a free and decent world.And so, in God's mercy, a happy Christmas to you all."
-- Winston Churchill, 1941
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