I'm probably somewhere between your writer and you, Mark. I try to push Christmas back as close to Christmas eve as possible, then keep it alive until at Epiphany.
I say "try" because it seems like my wife, children and even my fellow traditionalist Catholics - to say nothing about my Novus Ordo friends - have given up on paying both Advent and Christmas their proper times. For example, every year it's a "fight" to keep my wife from taking down the Christmas tree the day after Christmas. And I sure wish we could have Christmas carols continue through Epiphany, but ....
I'll keep plugging away, though. Either way, I certainly love these seasons and am looking forward to them.
The reader is not a fussbudget but bang on.
In Toronto, the "Santa Clause" parade one year was held the same weekend as the Sunday before Nov 11 and literally collided with some of the Remembrance Day Church parades.
In my circle of work and neighborhood acquaintances, I'm the one who harps that Dec 25 is not the Winter Solctice.
But I'm also the office and/or neighborhood Epiphany maven, who rubs the 12 Xays of Christmas in their faces by way of liturgically demonstating that we of the True Religion are party animals who insist on continued and sustained faith-based wassailing right into mid-January. Only then does our tree get packed up (it's a plastic tree, a family heirloom since 1975 which we carried from Brooklyn to Toronto.)
So there, you Yuppyscum neo-Pagans - counter humbug to you!!!!!
Be contrarian. Be a Catholic. And as Mark the Blogmeister says - enjoy it.
And as F. Scott Fitzgerald said: living well is the best revenge. Tis the season.
Advent an
I am a Christmas music junkie, I confess. It takes tremendous discipline to hold off til even the beginning of Advent.
I have my Christmas CD's stored in the trunk of my car and will only bring them forward to play in the car for my ride to the 8 pm Saturday Mass which will be our first Mass of Advent. But I always play Veni Veni Emmanuel, in Latin, first and foremost.
When my son was younger, he used to begin banging out carols on the piano in early November. But I notice now he is just starting to work them into his practice. He gets a free pass to practice them early now that he occasionally plays the organ before/after/during Mass.
Here's a question for fellow commenters: What are some good Advent hymns? The only ones that come to mind other than O Come O Come Emmanuel are:
-People Look East (from the OCP hymnal)
-Any setting of the words to the Angelus (I have one on a Chanticleer CD that I love
Why can't I think of any others?
Jo:
Don't think this classifies as a hymn exactly, but I like Harry Connick's great version of Ave Maria - though I suppose its arguably a Christmas song (as opposed to Advent) too.
My wife is a Christmas junkie. The decorations are already going up, the music is playing...AND she'll still be doing it all the way to the end of the liturgical Christmas season. She expresses great indignation at seeing Christmas trees on the curb on Decimber 26.
Re: Advent hymns.
I sympathise witht he search for advent music - every parish I've ever been in has tended to find one and repeat it every sunday.
A few:
Sleepers, Wake! (originally German, Bach did an arrangement.
Come thou long expected Jesus
Hark the glad sound! (I like this one)
On Jordan's Banks the Baptist's cry
(www.cyberhymnal.org)
A note though....many Catholic hymnals won't have these hymns. They're mostly German Lutheran or Wesleyan classics.
At the Catholic high school where I teach theology, I am known as the, "Advent Nazi". Now, that’s going a little too far, but I am determined for students to understand that Christmas can more fully be appreciated and understood by fully observing Advent during Advent and Christmas during Christmas. Does anyone deny that this whole Christmas in November is a conspiracy, based on commercialism? Why should Catholics fall into their trap. I say be strong! Christmas begins on the evening of December 24th and not a minute before!
I agree! In my neighborhood (not quite catholic) lights go up mid November and down December 26.
But remember that for these folks, once the gifts are opened and brought back to the store for exchange, what else is there to do?
It's back to the grind and forget about "peace on Earth" etc.
As for good Advent hymns, I also long for more: where are the music people when you need them? Could they take some time off their studying inclusive language and write some good ones? There are many verses from Isaiah and company that are waiting for some good notes.
Well, enough whining for a day, I can go back to being happy!
We keep our tree up until at least the New Year. When I was a kid, we kept it up til Epiphany...and my oldest sister's B-day signified the end of Christmas season. I really picked up on these seasons when I moved where I live now. We only sing "O Come, O Come Emmanual" til Christmas Eve mass, when the first Christmas hymns are played. We also sing them through Epiphany. It was kinda odd at first, since the secular world moves on to Valentine's Day and we're still rejoicing over the Lord's birth.
Try the Novena to the Immaculate Conception (PIus IX proclaimed this a dogma in 1854). It starts 30 nov. If not online, its in the Handbook of Prayers compiled by Fr. James Socias (see Catholic Answers or Scepter Publishers; they sell it.).
+J.M.J+
Well, I am a bit of a "stickler" over Christmas carols during Advent (or before!), partly because I don't want to get sick of them before Christmas finally arrives. My husband sometimes wants to hear them early, though.
Last Thursday I was surfing through some local radio stations and actually heard one playing "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer". A week before Thanksgiving! Come on, now, that's just too early! Give Turkey Day a chance before dragging out the reindeer already.
Believe it or not, I usually begin my Christmas shopping in August - or October at the latest - so that I'm at least 95% finished by Thanksgiving (right now I just have to get one or two more presents and I'm done).
I do this so that I can keep my Advent free to be, well, Advent, rather than the "holiday shopping season". I'd rather focus on preparation for the coming of Christ than visit crowded malls festooned for Christmas with muzak versions of carols playing in a const
An update on the Advent hymn search--just got back from taking kid for his organ lesson. I was able to browse the 2004 OCP music missal or whatever they call it while in the pew listening to him play. Michael Joncas has come up with a new version of the Magnificat that somehow translates "Henceforth all generations shall call me blessed" to something like"hereafter I will always think of myself as happy." Can you believe that?
I couldn't find anything else that looked Advent-ish in that hymnal, sad to say.
Sleepers Wake is a good one, although I hear it is actually very hard to play well.
Jesu joy of man's desiring might work for Advent, because of the desiring aspect.
Also, Lo, how a Rose 'ere blooming if you can think of Mary as the unspotted, everblooming rose. But I don't remember all the words to that one.
Our bishop's message for the season is to focus on Mary during Advent, so I'll go with any of the non-sorrowful Marian hymns like Alma Redemptoris M
(Um, when was the limit reduced to 1000 characters?)
...muzak versions of carols playing in a constant loop.
I also put up my Christmas decorations late. Visitors sometimes ask me in early December, "Don't you decorate for Christmas?" Yes, when Christmas finally arrives!
Just before Advent begins I take out the wreath and my small collection of St. Nicholas images. That's all the decorating I do till after December 21.
On Dec. 22, I decorate the house with holly, pine, etc.. The next day, I decorate the front window with a creche, a star and two strings of lights shaped like angels, which I arrange so they look like they are soaring over the manger scene. On the Vigil of Christmas we set up and decorate the Christmas tree with a creche underneath.
(During those three days I also wrap the presents; which I purchased months before).
It may seem extreme, but this is what I find works for me. I know others deal with the holiday differently, and that’s fine.
I like to celebrate Advent vs. the "Christmas Shopping Season" ("Many Happy Returns!"). I label all decorations, music, et cetera, as Christmas Shopping Season lights, decorations, carols, et cetera. The discipline of adding the "Shopping" part keeps me "oriented" suprisingly well, and my kids have even picked it up. By the way, I always say that Christians now have the Christmas season all to themselves again, since the world ends the Christmas Shopping Season on the 24th. Of, there is still the "Merry After Christmas Shopping Season" . . .
Here in Nova Scotia, I usually put the outdoor lights up in November, because there is no guarantee that there will be a day in December fit for such and undertaking. But they don't go on until Advent, and only on Sundays for the first three weeks or so (depends on how many days between the 4th Sunday and Christmas). The tree doesn't appear until at least Dec. 22, and it stays up past Epiphany, and frequently until the Feast of the Baptism and the return to Ordinary Time. My kids find this peculiar, but they seem to be adapting.
I do my shopping throughout the year, as I find suitable items.
The Advent wreath will come out on Sunday; it sits on the dining room table and we light it at dinnertime every night.
I'd rather not hear Christmas carols for at least another three weeks, and if I never have to hear another secular "Christmas Carol" in my life, it will be plenty soon enough. Fat chance of that, though!
Since the discussion worked its way around to music, I have to say one of my favorite traditions is singing the "O" Antiphons before Christmas.
Bully for your "reader"
It's always amazed me how trees appear at the curb on the evening of Dec. 25th, which parallels them being bought the day after Thanksgiving. The celebration is supposed to START on December 25th, not end then! There are other ways to have some "joy" during Advent, St. Nicholas Day (Dec. 6th) being chief among them. There's a really scary "prediction" of how things are going in the secular world regarding Christmas; read Frededik Pohl's short story, "Happy Birthday Jesus". He had it pegged year ago....
I compartmentalize in my own mind. Culturally, Christmas season starts shortly before Thanksgiving (anyone else catch the irony of a "stickler" trying to keep Christmas stuff for "proper" Christmas-time and in the same breath referring to "Turkey Day?") and runs until midafternoon December 25th. The church has Advent and Christmas, two different times for different purposes. I've mostly given up fussing about it either way, although I do gently support a reluctance toward Christmas songs in church before the Day (or, at least, the Eve!).
Frankly, what upsets me more these days is how intent the modernist set is on defrocking Christmas of any sense of religiosity, or of morality, or of honest history - from denying children the option to sing Christmas carols to perverting children's literature (Grinch, Cat In The Hat).
+J.M.J+
>>>(anyone else catch the irony of a "stickler" trying to keep Christmas stuff for "proper" Christmas-time and in the same breath referring to "Turkey Day?")
Actually, I don't catch the irony at all. What I said was: "Give Turkey Day a chance before dragging out the reindeer already."
I was just paralleling two animals: turkeys and reindeer; the former commonly associated with Thanksgiving and the latter with Christmas. It's just the way I write sometimes. I didn't mean anything else by it, and don't quite get why someone would consider it "ironic", or what the term "Turkey Day" (which I don't use too often myself) has to do with being a "stickler" about celebrating Christmas at the proper time.
In Jesu et Maria,
I and my family also work very hard to keep Advent as a time of preparing for Jesus's birth, and Christmas as a time of celebrating Jesus's birth. But it IS very difficult.
I live in a predominately Catholic town, yet Christmas decorations are in evidence as early as Halloween, and Christmas carols and events begin before Thanksgiving. Our parish priest mentions every year that Advent is a different liturgical season (and the church is NOT decorated until Christmas Eve), but the parish and parish schools go ahead with Christmas events in November and December just like the secular world does.
We do not set up decorations until the last week of Advent. Usually we go buy our tree the weekend before Christmas (depending on when Christmas falls). Several years we found NO live Christmas trees available. Even a local parish who sells trees and wreaths as a fundraiser has been closed down before we were able to buy a tree! (Lately we go and "order" the tree early, but do not pick
it up until it closes.)
It is definately a challenge. But I try to reasure myself by reasoning this way. Since the secular Xmas (or "holiday season") does not coincide AT ALL with the liturgical celebration of Christmas, I figure it is a good reminder that all the "stuff" of Christmas (Santa Clause, cookies, presnts, pine trees) is not ESSENTIAL to the real celebration of Christmas. We Catholics celebrate the Incarnation with or without this stuff.
It takes a lot of effort to live this way, and it does make me feel like a countercultural radical. But I am glad I am not the only one trying...
I think the point isn't so much when you throw out your Christmas tree or when you play Christmas carols. The question is: Are we preparing ourselves during Advent for the celebration of Christ's Incarnation, His continual presence in the Eucharist, and His eventual Second Coming? And for Christmas, are we celebrating His Incarnation while acknowledging that He is with us now in the Eucharist?
If we are doing those things, then it doesn't matter much when we throw out our Christmas trees.
+J.M.J+
True, the state of our hearts is most important of all. But other things mentioned above can be helpful too.
A brief story: during my college days, my roommates said that they hated Christmas! They weren't religious at all; to them the season was all just "shop-till-you-drop" and they couldn't wait until it was over!
This saddened me. To me, Christmas was wonderful; the day on which we celebrate Jesus' birth! Of course, I had not yet done much Christmas shopping at that point, and I wondered whether that might someday ruin the holiday for me as well.
So I resolved never to let that happen. I eventually worked out a plan where I would do my Christmas shopping early in order to prevent it from interfering with the seasons. Over time I developed other measures to keep Christmas special and holy. This has worked well for me, but I fully recognize that everyone is different and others may have their own strategies.
In Jesu et Maria,
This year, my family is trying to reorient ourselves to a more Catholic celebration of Advent and Christmas (much to the delight of our nine-year-old son who expressed discontent about all the fuss over presents and candy canes over that of Christ. God works in such wonderous ways!).
Anyway, like the bishop mentioned in the post above, we're focusing Advent on things Marian. This is relatively easy because there are Marian feasts throughout the period--e.g., Our Lady of Guadaloupe (sp?)--and there is no shortage of music in praise of Our Lady and devotions to her. Makes sense for the children, too, because they can appreciate Mary and Joseph in their roles as parents and the journey to Bethlehem becomes an anticipatory journey as well.
Pray that it turns out for us, please!
We've come up in a compromise which seems to work well in our home (I was for waiting and wife was for decorating early). We keep Advent with no decorations until Gaudate Sunday, but use that rose candle as the perfect excuse to put up the tree, get out the creche and start decorating. However, we hold back on some things: The Christ Child doesn't go into the creche until Christmas, and the lighted star doesn't go on the front porch until Christmas eve, and we hold back other stuff to bring out Christmas - plus everything stays up the 12 days. Actually, having the creche around a bit early helps with the young-un, since we get to use the figures to play "Mary and Joseph go to Bethlehem" in the days before Christmas.
Traditionally, I think you're supposed to have everything outta sight at 12th Night, the eve of Epiphany, but we can never bring ourselves to do that and always have the decorations up for one last night until nightfall of Epiphany. So sue me!
One thing that helps is to maintain the penitential spirit of advent with increased fasting and prayer like the Eastern Christians do with their Nativity fast. Treat it as a mini-lent to prepare for the first act in our redemption. This should help some in fighting off the temptation to start Christmas too soon--it would be like singing an Easter song during Lent!
Justin
my 2 cents (adjusted for inflation 1 1/2 cents):
I see nothing wrong with singing Christmas songs during the advent time. We started singing them (secular and religious) on the way home from grandma's house last night.
We also have St. nik visit on the 8th...not sure how that is line with advent or not?
On Christmas Eve we go to Mass and then drive 4 hours to visit my folks. then, on Christmas itself we are with the folks and do some gifts and food and other fun stuff.
Finally, on the Ephinany, Santa Claus pays a visit to our home. We do Christmas shop during the year, but the time from the 26th of Dec til Jan 5th (i think that's it this year?) has some good deals available.
this allows us to keep Christ in Christmas w/o worring about gift anxiety or other crap like that.
I think Advent should be joyous and happy and really don't get the reluctance about the songs?
Pax
+J.M.J+
>>>We also have St. nik visit on the 8th...not sure how that is line with advent or not?
Well, his feast day is the 6th, so it seems appropriate to me!
>>>I think Advent should be joyous and happy and really don't get the reluctance about the songs?
I guess for me the reluctance comes from two things. First, I'm trying to imitate the Church in this matter. At Mass we sing Advent hymns during Advent and save the Christmas hymns for Christmas Eve. I just want to follow the Church's wisdom here.
Advent looks forward to and prepares for His coming, while Christmas celebrates His coming. Since Christmas carols also celebrate His coming, they are basically more fitting for the Christmas season. But it's certainly no sin to sing them during Advent, or at any time of the year, for that matter.
Second, I'm concerned that if I hear the carols (religious or secular ones) continuously for four weeks before Christmas finally arrives, I might get sick of them! So
[will I ever get used to this 1000 word limit? 
]
(continued) So I just don't listen to them on the radio throughout December, in order to keep them special. But I can understand why some people might want to hear or sing them earlier, because they are wonderful!
In Jesu et Maria,
Okay, I'm one of the Reformed who likes to read this site, if only to remind myself that a pop test on theology ain't part of the entrance exam to Heaven.
But I digress already! Sorry.
My wife is putting up Christmas decorations out in the front room of our condo already. We're watching Bing and Frank on the new DVD we just got and we're planning to take MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET over to our movie group next Friday.
With heads held high, we admit to being unapologetic Christmas junkies. We start whenever we get around to it, depending on our schedules. I have never tired of reading Luke's account of the Nativity, and I'll get tired of very few Christmas Carols and songs, thank you very much.
I don't spend as much as I used to on Christmas, because we give more to various charities (USO, local Food Bank, church) than we did before we married. But I love that part, too. I remember that I'm celebrating the life of Jesus, but I'm also celebrating knowing the per
"Creator of the Stars of Night" is another very good Advent Hymn (Gregorian chant, you can't go wrong). And Marty Haugen escapes his usual insipidity with "My Soul in Stillness Waits." We do have a reasonable selection just for Advent in our hymnal, and yes, many are Lutheran--but my husband's Lutheran church also sings "O Come O Come Emmanuel,"--plus they sing all the verses, not just the first three.
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