This is the last Sunday in Advent, and it is worth considering how Christmas is celebrated. In the Secular world, we have had a lot of parties: I think I have been to at least two if not four a week for the last fortnight. The scales are groaning.

There is no idea that this should be a time of fasting, but instead a time of excess. My inbox is filled with special coupons, the TV and radio are full of the Christmas sales. It is also the end of the academic year, and a number of posters are put in the student area trying to tempt people away.

The traditions of Christmas within the monastery are different. They keep to the old rules: to my ears they sound foreign, for the rituals have fallen into abeyance among protestants, even more so among the general population.

It stands to reason, that if the Lord came to save us and destroy the power of sin and death, then those sympathetic to sin and death will greet His Advent with considerable fear. “Now is the judgment of the world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” The Truth is now present in our midst; His very presence shall prove us for what we are. And indeed, in Advent it was customary to focus on the judgment, recognizing that the first Advent of the Lord points to the second Advent. If the first Advent seems gentle, it was gentle to us while it was severe to the power that dominated us; but our Lord made it clear that when He would come again, if He found us still fraternizing with the enemy He took pains to dispel, we would receive the same traitor’s treatment.
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My first bit of advice for men who wish to recover the ancient spirit of Christmas, then, would be to let Christmas be Christmas; the time before Christmas is a time to anticipate this dread and awful Mystery—the Imminent arrival of Truth in our midst. It is the time to contemplate our need of it, our hope of it, our fear of it. We prepare to meet the Lord when He comes, therefore, that our response to His Advent will not be to our shame, but to our very great joy and profit.

Beginning on the first Sunday of Advent, cease eating meat and dairy; on weekdays, wait until the afternoon to eat, if possible. If not possible, stick as close to the spirit of this practice as you can. Trust me, when I say that your Christmas Feast will be all the more meaningful and merry after a month of fasting. Use the hunger for focus, penance and training in self-mastery.

Men should always limit television and frivolous entertainments, but especially at fasting seasons like Lent and Advent. Long ago, I found that if I came home from work and began my evening with some time reflecting either on that day’s prayers (from the Breviary/Divine Office), or quietly meditating on the season’s hymns, carols, Scripture, etc., I would enter a recollected mood that would last the whole night. Contrary to expectation, the fasting periods quickly became my favourite and most introspective times of the year.

Strive to maintain an environment conducive to this custody of mind and stomach. Try to avoid the endless stream of silly parties, even if courtesy will require you to attend some. Decorate the home liberally, but at first with simple and stark trimmings of pine, of holly, of dark green, red and violet. Stick to the carols that anticipate Christmas, (such as Veni, Veni Immanuel), or are thoughtful meditations on the theology of the Mystery (such as Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming or The Angel Gabriel).

Save the bright lights, the gold and silver trimmings, the festive decorations, the most boisterous carols celebrating the joy of Christmas Day… for Christmas Day! As we will see in a future post, Christmas Day is only the beginning of Christmas. Until then, let everything be conducive to the mood of quiet, of recollection, of awed anticipation.

Now, that is good advice to those who follow the seasons. I belong to a church that does and live in a society that does. But I don’t follow that much. There is no trees and not lights at my place. The enforced jollity exhausts me, and I feel my sense of balance gone: for within our society we go from extremes of exercise to gluttony.

And we forget the theology. For this is a time long foretold, and a time that deals with the enemy, and souls, and deep mystery. The very idea of the incarnation should drive is to our knees. That Christ would shed is glory to be a dependant babe, and be born to die in our place.

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And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

(Genesis 3:8-15 ESV)

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

(John 3:16-21 ESV)

This is a strange time. The very drama of the advent has been turned into political talking points; we must receive refugees because Christ went to Egypt to be spared from a tyrant: These things must be scripted. As if being with one’s family is some kind of perverted town hall, or that at nineteen you understand it all.

Attached to this is an idea that one can take the nice bits of all religions. That mixing and matching and making your own mystery is in some way sensible. But, as the Sarah notes, it is a facade, and our stormy brother Spartacus says, it is mere narcissism. I would add it is being soft headed.

Even when the “spiritual but not religious” approach has not been reduced to a marketing gimmick, it is still a narcissistic bit of flim-flam. When I first went to college (a few years before I became a monk), a girl I took out asked me why I “limited myself” to just one religion, rather than picking and choosing the things I liked best from all of them. Picking from all of them would be more “open minded,” she explained. I told her that nothing was less open-minded than destroying the integrity of a culture’s religious practices, reassembling the ones you already liked into a new, personal mish-mash. An open-minded person would allow a religious tradition to impact him as it is, not hack away at it until only a reflection of his preconceived notions remained.

Moreover, I told her that religion was about Truth, and involved many fine distinctions in the exposition of momentous questions; it was impossible to preserve such integrity of thought with a buffet-style approach. Her statement implied that spirituality is simply a collection of practices designed to produce a feeling or state of mind, to entertain or to flatter one’s self. I told her that a person who approached the divine in this was simply worshipping himself, rather than rising above himself by contact with what is higher than himself.

Her reply was that if I could only hear myself, I would see how my narrow religious views had already given me a very judgmental attitude; it was not my place to tell other people which spiritual ideas and practices were right, they had to find what was “true” for them.

Religion is not about the feelings. Though I love music: though any modern song that cannot be stripped down to one instrument is not well crafted, though we should worship with our heart as well as our head.

Those of us who are reformed, introverted, and tend to ignore the calendar, your blogger included, have to accept that most are not made this way. The seasons matter to them: and the way that we traditionally build a church year is based on logic, to reflect truth.

And we need to know that this world hates the truth, and will corrupt it.

So it is soon time to celebrate. I will head to my family. I will have to find the services: I will have to attend the feasts. I will enjoy spending time with those wiser than I, for they simply accept the truths I chew over.

And blogging will be light until after the new year.