As a Catholic convert whose friends and family are mostly Protestant, I take a slightly vindictive pleasure in this time of the year. Whether you call it "Advent" or "the Christmas season," it's the one time when everybody has to admit that Jesus had a mother.
Most of the year, Protestants tend to be what The Crusty Curmudgeon calls "Romophobic" about Mary. They keep her stashed away in a little closet, not wanting to talk about her for fear of being too effusive about her. (Check out his thoughts on the phenomenon here; they're excellent.) But in December, the Blessed Virgin gets trotted out for pageants and readings of Luke 2. Come December 26, of course, she'll be relegated to obscurity again. But for these few weeks, she gets to share the stage with her Son. During Advent, she's an actual person, not merely a handy uterus for the Lord to occupy. Protestants who would usually be very leery of any tradition more than five hundred years old (or even more than forty years) are drawn back to old, half-remembered traditions that make the season a mystical one in a rationalistic culture. So for the occasion, I'm trotting out something half-remembered myself: a column I wrote a couple of years ago for a local Christian (mostly Protestant) magazine:
I wish I could say I loved the Christmas season. I really wish I could. It’s supposed to be a time of festive anticipation. Peace on earth and all that.
Unfortunately, Christmas is also a time of great commercial promotion, as every retailer tries to convince shoppers that their product is exactly what all your loved ones want for a Christmas present. And being in the newspaper business, I have to advertise all this stuff. It’s caused me to have sort of a cynical view of the season.
(Incidentally, I’m using “Christmas” here to refer to the time before Christmas Day that Catholics and other liturgical Christians more properly call “Advent.” Just so we’re all clear on the terminology.)
For instance, I loathe secular Christmas music. I enjoy traditional carols, but “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” leaves me with an inexplicable craving for venison. If I ever see a snowman called Frosty, I’ll turn a hair dryer in his direction and use him to water my lawn.
My wife (I found out after we were married) has no such grinchiness in her nature. Within 24 hours of the beginning of Advent, she will have our house looking like a craft bazaar, with angels, santas, stars and strains of “Jingle Bell Rock” pervading the house. Naturally, we’ve had to compromise on this. I don’t complain, and she doesn’t ignore my complaints.
I think what irks me about the season is the loss of tradition. Christmas is essentially a Christian celebration of the Nativity, and that gets drowned out sometimes under the shopping-mall feeding frenzy and the ordeal of the Christmas card list. (“Let’s see... Aunt Gladys sent us one last year, but she spelled our names wrong. Should we send her one this year or not?”)
Many Christians are as frustrated as I am by the secularization of Christmas, and so I’ve noticed a funny thing happening: Protestants start worshipping a lot like Catholics.
Not that the theology changes, or anything like that. It’s just that Protestants, especially Evangelicals, are put off by a lot of the traditions Catholics observe. At Christmas time, though, that discomfort seems to fade.
Take Mary. A lot of Protestant Christians are understandably nervous when it comes to Mary, because Catholics make such a big deal about her. But at Christmastime, she makes appearances in pageants, nativity scenes, and the like. This is her big moment in the Bible, and it’s a time when all Christians can honor her without feeling like they’re being idolatrous. “Henceforth all generations shall call me blessed,” she said, and at Christmas, they do.
(By the way, did you ever notice that whenever you see Mary in a Nativity scene, she’s wearing blue? That comes from an old Catholic custom and is both symbolic of the sky and the mark of a queen. I wonder how many churches use a blue costume for Mary in the Christmas pageant without realizing how far back the practice goes.)
Speaking of nativity scenes, there’s another tradition that reappears at Christmastime. Christians who would be uncomfortable around statues of the saints at any other time will put up little statuettes on their mantel to show the birth of the Savior. They also sing carols like “Angels we have Heard on High” with its beautiful refrain, “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” Latin in hymns, candles, even incense in some churches, all carry us back to a time when the division between Catholic and Protestant wasn’t so cut-and-dried. It’s a memory of Anglican and Lutheran worship, held over even in Evangelical churches that are wholly contemporary in their worship style the rest of the year. Christmas, it seems to say, is a time to be old-fashioned. And I agree.
A few years ago, I went to a midnight Mass at the Cathedral in Seattle. I was with some Protestant friends, and I wondered how they would react. What I saw was interesting. Not only was the Cathedral so full that people were literally pushed out the doors, but a large number of the worshippers were obviously not Catholic. I overheard more than one conversation in which somebody was explaining to a visitor what was meant by a particular phrase or symbol, and as the hymns were sung, I saw a number of those same visitors with upraised hands and a rapt look on their faces, lost in the sheer beauty of the liturgy. There were probably as many Protestants there as Catholics, joining together to sing “Glory to God in the Highest” to the God Who was born in a stable to save all humanity. There was no self-consciousness or discomfort about it. For this occasion, no honor, no homage, was too great for our Lord.
Gloria in excelsis Deo, indeed!
Merry Christmas to all my Christian siblings, Papes and Prods alike!
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