A New Way to Celebrate the Holidays: The Christmas Season

A New Way to Celebrate the Holidays: The Christmas Season

The United States seems to keep a "Christmas season" without even knowing it. It begins after Halloween when stores everywhere start to put up their Christmas trees and other decorations. This season continues through Thanksgiving, a holiday which now is best known as the day before Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year.

Once December arrives, the celebration of Christmas speeds up. Radio stations play their Christmas songs, offices and families have parties, and schools start their Christmas programs. You know Christmas is coming soon when schools start their winter breaks. The festivities continue and become even more pronounced until December 25th, when the celebration reaches its height. Gifts are exchanged, family meals are shared, and the level of joy and compassion increases for about a day.

At that point, the dreaded December 26th arrives. It's time to go back to work, the radio stations stop playing Christmas songs, and your next door neighbor who was promoting peace and love moments earlier is now spewing his usual hate. If you're like me, you've experienced this post-Christmas letdown before, which often came in the form of a mild depression. I'd stare at a pile of gifts and wonder where all the joy and happiness of the previous day had gone.

However, it doesn't have to be that way. Throughout history most people didn't just celebrate Christmas Day; they celebrated Christmas as a season. For four weeks preceding Christmas, they practiced Advent, a time of simple worship, quiet contemplation, and preparation to await the coming of Jesus. There were no decorations, no lights, and no Christmas parties. Jesus hadn't symbolically arrived, so they were still in a season of waiting.

The night of December 24th marked the start of the Christmas festivities. The family would go to midnight mass with its special Christmas prayers and when they returned, would light the tree, sing the carols, and have a huge party. And, this celebration would continue through the Twelve Days of Christmas, which last from Christmas Day until January 6th, the holy day of Epiphany. Some traditions don't place the end of Christmas until February 2nd, the feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary (or Candlemas)

I'm not some old fogey who's going to argue that the world needs to go back to celebrating the old ways of Advent and Christmas. However, keeping Advent as a quiet, reflective period before Christmas helps me be less stressed through the parties, the shopping trips, and the chaos. I still enjoy the lights, the trees, the music, and the parties, but they're mixed with some Advent reflection and a genuine waiting for Jesus.

Then, once Christmas Day arrives, I don't stop the celebrating. I keep up the tree, leave the lights on, continue to say the Christmas prayers, and listen to carols. The "old ways" allow me to avoid the post-Christmas crash that used to come like clockwork on December 26th. When the feasting period finally ends around February 2nd,, I'm ready to move on.

Jonathan Storm is owner, writer, consultant, and speaker. Check out his websites about Christmas and Christmas Prayers too. You'll learn a lot about a great holiday.

by Jonathan R Storm; Friday, November 4, 2011 @ 08:37 AM [174]

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