Inspiration Well, that great consumer event is coming up--the incarnation
of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, our Lord and Master, Jesus
Christ. About a week before
Thanksgiving, we say to ourselves that we will keep it simple and stay more
focused this year. And perhaps, each
year we get better at channeling through the material confusion of
Christmas. Perhaps each year we get
better at finding a moment (or two) of “spiritual reality” where we realize
what truly is the source and
power of this thing called “The Christmas Spirit.”
The Christmas season has become larger than life; words like jolly
and joy, magical and wonderland are used to describe this time. There is a lot of excitement generated
and we as Orthodox Christians often wonder where the joy of Christ’s birth
ends and the joy of booming business begins. How do we as faithful servants of Christ
participate in the increasingly secular traditions of the holiday while
maintaining our Christian integrity?
The concept of celebratory festal periods is indeed very
Orthodox. By setting certain days
apart for feasting and celebrating we recognize the sacredness of their
significance. So, while we can
embrace the Christmas season for focusing us on the Nativity of Christ let
us also not forget the season of preparation. The Church in her great wisdom precedes
every great feast with a fast. The Nativity Lenten season is a time of
fasting and prayer so that when we come to Liturgy of the Birth of Christ
we can rejoice deep in our soul at the proclamation, “Today Christ is born
of the Virgin in Bethlehem!” (H Parthena Simeron…) The profound reality of this message and
what it means to our life and our loved ones sometimes has trouble
penetrating the thick outer shell of worldly cares. The Fast, then, is prescribed so that we
can be there at that moment—not just
in body, but in body, mind and
soul.
So often, however, the office and school Christmas parties are
before Christmas during the Fast and then on the 26th of
December it’s time to turn off the Christmas lights and get back to
work. It takes determination on the
part of an Orthodox Christian to abstain from holiday cookies during the
Fast and to keep remembering that our time to feast is December 25th
to January 6th which includes the great feasts of the
Circumcision of our Lord and His Epiphany (with a preparatory fast on
January 5th!) In doing
so, we can keep our hearts, minds and bodies in Christ and keep ourselves
from being swept away by the strong undercurrent of holiday secularism.
Christmas is said to be magical—we Orthodox call it mystical. In the new holiday movie, “Elf”,
Santa’s sleigh couldn’t fly because there wasn’t enough Christmas
Spirit. Christmas Spirit is a good
thing, because it is the Spirit of God’s overwhelming and outpouring love. Love enough to be born in a humble animal
barn as a helpless baby in order to conquer sin and death for our
sake. Let us always look to the
Church to keep us in the fullness of the Christmas Spirit.
