Let's Celebrate Christmas at the Right Time

As I write this, it is a few days before Halloween. Just yesterday, I saw an early Christmas commercial on tv. That led me to share this thought: Our modern society doesn't celebrate Christmas when we're supposed to. 

According to the Liturgical Calendar of the Church, the Christmas season begins with the Vigil Mass on Christmas Eve. It's officially over on the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which will be January 11th this season. In some popular cultures, the season runs from Christmas Day to the Feast of the Epiphany. This period of time is the basis for the song " The Twelve Days of Christmas."

I was doing some grocery shopping today in one of my local "big box" stores. One side of the store had prominent displays of Halloween candy, costumes, and decorations. The other side had it's huge garden department already filled with Christmas decorations and paraphernalia. Merchants, always trying to increase their profit, seem to push Christmas on us a little earlier each year.

My mother was Italian, and she learned from her parents to celebrate the season when it should be celebrated. Granted, she didn't strictly adhere to the liturgical calendar: Our tree and other decorations were up about one or two weeks beore Christmas, but they stayed up until Epihany, which, when I was a boy, was always January 6th.
Today, it seems that most people put their Christmas trees and other decorations up the day after Thanksgiving if not earlier. But unfortunately, by the time Christmas Day arrives, they are sick of the whole thing. One of the saddest sights I see every year is that of dried up Christmas trees left on the curbs for garbage pickup the day after Christmas. I knew one woman who took her tree and decorations down in the afternoon on Christmas Day!

The Church wisely has a period of waiting and anticipation each year before Christmas. Of course, I'm speaking of Advent. This roughly four week period of time is meant to be a period of preparation, of waiting, of anticipation. We wait for the celebration of the birth of Jesus, and we also wait for His Second Coming, the Parousia. The sanctuaries of the church buildings are decorated in the color purple, and the vestments of the priest and deacon are also purple. It is the color we see during Lent. It is penitential in nature, meant to remind us that we are about to celebrate a great event: the birth of the Savior of Humankind. We are given this time to prepare our spiritual selves for this celebration. To help us mark the progression of this time of waiting, there is an Advent Wreath prominently displayed. The wreath has four candles, one for each of the four Sundays before Christmas.

This is properly what we should be doing in our own homes instead decorating for Christmas too early. We should be waiting, anticipating, preparing. What a great time to teach our children the true meaning of Christmas. We can make our own Advent Wreaths to be displayed at home. There are excellent blessings and prayers we can use which can be found on the internet. If we have children, we can buy or create Advent Calendars to help them experience the anticipation. Perhaps on the last Sunday of Advent we could set out part of the crèche. We could set up the stable alone, perhaps with an empty manger. When the children are sleeping Christmas Eve night, as we set out their presents, we could place the infant Jesus in the manger, and add the figures of Joseph and Mary and the Shepherds, sheep and cattle. In my house, we wait to add the figures of the Magi until Epiphany.

Because we waited to decorate, we are not tired of seeing the tree. It looks fresh and stays that way for the next couple of weeks. We teach our children the virtues of waiting, not the fleeing pleasures of instant gratification. To my way of thinking, this is how Christmas should be observed. We should celebrate it in its proper time, not much too early. I challenge those of you who have been beginning your celebration right after Thanksgiving to try celebrating Christmas when it should be celebrated, and see if you enjoy it more.