Sherry Chandler » Twelve Days
Twelve Days
Lance Mannion has a good idea:
I’m one of those I think all too rare people who like Scrooge’s nephew Fred is determined to keep their Christmas humor to the last, the last being the stroke of midnight on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, also known as Little Christmas or, if you’re Greek Orthodox or Avedon Carol, Christmas.
There are Twelve Days of Christmas plus one and I wish that people would celebrate them all. I try to, which is why you’ll hear me disconcerting people all this weekend when we’re visiting the relatives at Mom and Pop Mannion’s homestead by wishing them all a Merry Christmas and why I’ve been fitfully and so far ineffectively trying to make Twelfth Night parties a Mannion family tradition.
I think it’s a crying shame that most people let the retailers determine their Christmas season for them and not the Church calender and that we’re all expected to be done with the best of all the holidays when the last present is opened on December 25 at which point it’s time to get ready for the worst of all holidays, New Year’s Eve, the annual national rubbing it in of too many people’s desperate loneliness.
Though I am spiritually more a Baptist than a Catholic, I’m all for this extended Christmas if only because I just can’t get in the Christmas spirit until about December 24 anyway. And I hate to tell the department store people this, but those canned carols don’t help in the least.
I know people who do their Christmas shopping in October but that just strikes me as strange. (Though when they do it at a Guild Fair, I love them for it.)
I certainly don’t want to start rushing for Christmas on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I’d like a little time to digest my turkey and ruminate, thank you.
But a slow long Christmas season might give me time to do something besides fret at all the things I’m not doing.
But then I’m an introvert and we in the United States have made of Christmas such an extroverted season.
While on the subject of the Christmas spirit, I’d also like to draw your attention to a fine Henri Nouwen quote that Helen Losse is featured yesterday:
We are not sent to the world to judge, to condemn, to evaluate, to classify, or to label. When we walk around as if we have to make up our mind about people and tell them what is wrong with them and how they should change, we will only create more division. Jesus says it clearly: “Be compassionate just as your Father is compassionate. Do not judge; … do not condemn; … forgive” (Luke 6:36-37).
In a world that constantly asks us to make up our minds about other people, a nonjudgmental presence seems nearly impossible. But it is one of the most beautiful fruits of a deep spiritual life and will be easily recognized by those who long for reconciliation.
And a corollary from one of her commenters, Ritwik Bannerjee:
Those who judge never learn, They are as blind when they leave as they were when they were born.
I’m not sure that we can ever be completely free of judgment but these thoughts resonate with me.
I have long since ceased to hope for justice, that is so often confused with revenge. But mercy is still possible.
Possibly related posts:
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
2 Comments
1. Georgia Green Stamper replies at 29th December 2007, 8:51 am :
Sherry, I’m not sure that Twelth Night observance is so much a non-Protestant tradition as it is a forgotten tradition. “Old Christmas” is frequently referred to in Kentucky mountain lore - the night the animals can talk, I think - and there is a wonderful old ballad about Old Christmas that used to be in high school literature books. I’ll try to find it and send it to you. Several of my Presbyterian friends always observe “Old Christmas.” Growing up in a Kentucky farm family, we did not observe Twelth Night (had to get the rest of the tobacco crop ready for market you know) but “Christmas Week” which stretched between Christmas Eve, when we had our first family party, through New Year’s Day was a celebratory time of family visits and holiday spirit. No one took the Christmas tree down until New Year’s Day or the day after. I often leave our tree up through the first week of January (when my father was killed in an accident on January 5, Christmas trees were still standing in both my parents’ home and in mine.) But to be honest, that’s related more to laziness than much else. Also, I’m so busy in the days leading up to Christmas Eve that I have little time to sit by the fire and stare at the tree. I’m as mesmerized now by the twinkling lights and gaudy decorations on our tree as I was as a child.
2. sherry replies at 29th December 2007, 9:00 am :
Thanks for this comment, Georgia. I was
mistakenlazy to lump all Protestants in with the Southern Baptists, who are very much iconophobic and so reject anything “high church” I think. I have had epiphany cards from Howard and Sandy Olds, who are United Methodists, so I should have known better.Certainly “old Christmas” is a tradition I only learned about as an adult. Still, for us, Christmas tree time was pretty much Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day and for me, this week at the very least is still Christmas.
Leave a comment