Here we have battle and blazing eyes, And chance and honour and high surprise, But our homes are under miraculous skies Where the yule tale was begun. A Child in a foul stable, Where the beasts feed and foam; Only where He was homeless Are you and I at home; We have hands that fashion and heads that know, But our hearts we lost — how long ago!
To an open house in the evening Home shall men come, To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star, To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless And all men are at home. What is the true meaning of Christmas? Chesterton sheds some poetic light in explanation. It is perfectly reasonable at this season of the year to ask whether people in general have lost the true meaning of Christmas.
Can anything fresh or striking be said about the great religious feast, so deeply embedded are we in the familiar themes and platitudes? What is a little more disconcerting is the ever more prevailing sense of increasing loss of the meaning of what we are precisely celebrating. This is to be expected in a largely secular environment, in a highly sophisticated materialistic society. Religious notions for many are a far distant or at best blurred memory of what used to be the norm in our childhood or early adolescence.
God sends his only begotten Son into the world to restore mankind to Himself. In the delightful poem of the English writer G. Chersterton we have the essence of the Christmas spirit,. To an open house in the evening Home shall all men come, To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star, To the things that cannot be and are To the place where God was homeless And all men are at home. It is equally true when we consider the the heart of the Christmas message that if we pay homage to the child on our visit to Bethlehem we must also visit and reverence the mother.
In common life you cannot approach the child except through the mother, if we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas or Christmas out of Christ or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and to cross. Just as Christmas is the manifestation of the divine condescension so it is only in imitation of the humility of the simple, uncomplicated, honest, hardworking shepherds that we approach the Saviour of the world wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying on the wood which is a cruel premonition of his final end.
We are like those shepherds. In contrast to the Magi we come bearing no gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. There is really one thing only that we offer the child of Bethlehem on Christmas morn, ourselves purified, cleansed from the mire of sin. We come to receive not haggle or bargain, buy or sell like most of our fellow citizens.
We come to wonder and adore not to rationalize and understand. We come in haste, joyful in spirit, ready to fall upon our knees. You are commenting using your WordPress.
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In in West Jerusalem, the Lobby for Jewish Values, with support of the Jerusalem Rabbinate , handed out fliers condemning Christmas and called for a boycott of "restaurants and hotels that sell or put up Christmas trees and other 'foolish' Christian symbols".
The Brussels Christmas tree in the Belgian capital sparked controversy in December , as it was part of renaming the Christmas Market as "Winter Pleasures". Efforts have also been made to rename official public holiday trees back to Christmas trees. In , a bill was introduced in the California Senate to rename the State Holiday Tree the California State Christmas Tree; [] while this measure did not pass, at the official lighting of the tree on 4 December , California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger referred to the tree as a Christmas tree in his remarks and in the press release his office issued after the ceremony.
The name change was in honor of the late Senator William "Pete" Knight. Schwarzenegger said at Knight's funeral that he would change the name back to Christmas tree. Knight had lobbied unsuccessfully to change the name after Governor Davis decided to call it a holiday tree. The Michigan Senate had a debate in over whether the decorated tree in front of the Michigan Capitol would continue to be called a holiday tree as it had been since the early s or named a Christmas tree.
The question was revisited in , when the bipartisan Michigan Capitol Committee voted unanimously to use the term Christmas tree. Under the state atheism of the former Eastern Bloc, Christmas was banned, along with other Christian holidays. The celebration of Christmas has occasionally been criticized by Muslims in Turkey. During the holiday season, a Muslim youth group launched an anti-Santa Claus campaign, protesting against the celebration of Christmas in the country. Some Churches, sects, and communities of the Restoration Movement reject the observance of Christmas for theological reasons; these include Jehovah's Witnesses , [] ; Armstrongites , [] the True Jesus Church , Church of God 7th-Day , the Iglesia ni Cristo , the Christian Congregation in Brazil , the Christian Congregation in the United States , the Churches of Christ , as well as certain reformed and fundamentalist churches of various persuasions, including some Independent Baptists [] and Oneness Pentecostals.
The claims were picked up later by Gerald L. Smith , who in December claimed that Xmas was a "blasphemous omission of the name of Christ" and that "'X' is referred to as being symbolical of the unknown quantity. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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For the brief cessation of hostilities during World War I, see Christmas truce. Christmas portal Christianity portal. On the mainland, seventeenth-century Puritan New England had laws forbidding the observance of Christmas. The Christian groups who broke with the Catholic Church and the Church of England deemphasized Christmas in the early colonial period.
Carols were altered by substituting names of prominent political leaders for royal characters in the lyrics, such as the Three Kings. Church bells were melted down for their bronze to increase the national treasury, and religious services were banned on Christmas Day.
The cake of kings, too, came under attack as a symbol of the royalty. It survived, however, for a while with a new name--the cake of equality. Archived from the original on 1 November Retrieved 31 October How did people celebrate the Christmas during the French Revolution? In white-knuckled terror behind closed doors. Churches across France were renamed "Temples of Reason" and the Notre Dame was "de-baptized" for the occasion. The Commune spared no expense: Christmas at the Movies: A chapter on representations of Christmas in Soviet cinema could, in fact be the shortest in this collection: Retrieved 14 December For the first time in more than seven decades, Christmas—celebrated today by Russian Orthodox Christians—is a full state holiday across Russia's vast and snowy expanse.
Yeltsin's ambitious plan to revive the traditions of Old Russia, the republic's legislature declared last month that Christmas, long ignored under atheist Communist ideology, should be written back into the public calendar. Polosin, head of the Russian legislature's committee on religion. A history of propaganda". Retrieved 11 August Retrieved 5 December Archived from the original on 29 January Retrieved 28 July Archived from the original on 3 February Retrieved 9 March The Origins of Christmas.
The Christmas Encyclopedia, 3d ed. The Oxford History of Christian Worship. The Origins of the Liturgical Year.
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Retrieved December 27, University of California Press. In the Council of Tours proclaimed that the entire period between Christmas and Epiphany should be considered part of the celebration, creating what became known as the twelve days of Christmas, or what the English called Christmastide. On the last of the twelve days, called Twelfth Night, various cultures developed a wide range of additional special festivities. The variation extends even to the issue of how to count the days.
If December 26, the day after Christmas, is the first day, then Twelfth Night falls on January 6, the evening of Epiphany itself. After Christmas and Epiphany were in place, on December 25 and January 6, with the twelve days of Christmas in between, Christians gradually added a period called Advent, as a time of spiritual preparation leading up to Christmas. Companion to the Calendar. In the year the church council of Tours called the 13 days between December 25 and January 6 a festival season.
Up until that time the only other joyful church season was the 50 days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost. Holidays and Holy Nights: This arrangement became an administrative problem for the Roman Empire as it tried to coordinate the solar Julian calendar with the lunar calendars of its provinces in the east. While the Romans could roughly match the months in the two systems, the four cardinal points of the solar year--the two equinoxes and solstices--still fell on different dates. By the time of the first century, the calendar date of the winter solstice in Egypt and Palestine was eleven to twelve days later than the date in Rome.
As a result the Incarnation came to be celebrated on different days in different parts of the Empire. The Western Church, in its desire to be universal, eventually took them both--one became Christmas, one Epiphany--with a resulting twelve days in between. Over time this hiatus became invested with specific Christian meaning. The Church gradually filled these days with saints, some connected to the birth narratives in Gospels Holy Innocents' Day, December 28, in honor of the infants slaughtered by Herod; St.
John the Evangelist, "the Beloved," December 27; St. In , the Council of Tours declared the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany to become one unified festal cycle. Christmas is not really about the celebration of a birth date at all. It is about the celebration of a birth. The fact of the date and the fact of the birth are two different things. The calendrical verification of the feast itself is not really that important What is important to the understanding of a life-changing moment is that it happened, not necessarily where or when it happened.
The message is clear: Christmas is not about marking the actual birth date of Jesus. It is about the Incarnation of the One who became like us in all things but sin Heb. Christmas is a pinnacle feast, yes, but it is not the beginning of the liturgical year. It is a memorial, a remembrance, of the birth of Jesus, not really a celebration of the day itself.
We remember that because the Jesus of history was born, the Resurrection of the Christ of faith could happen. Throughout the Christian world the 25th of December is celebrated as the birthday of Jesus Christ. There was a time when the churches were not united regarding the date of the joyous event. Many Christians kept their Christmas in April, others in May, and still others at the close of September, till finally December 25 was agreed upon as the most appropriate date. The choice of that day was, of course, wholly arbitrary, for neither the exact date not the period of the year at which the birth of Christ occurred is known.
For purposes of commemoration, however, it is unimportant whether the celebration shall fall or not at the precise anniversary of the joyous event. For Christians, the precise date of the birth of Jesus is actually something of a non-issue. What really matters is that he was born as a human being, and entered into human history.
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Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas. Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs. Probably the most popular tradition today is the lighting of candles on an Advent Wreath in both churches and homes. This custom originated among Lutherans in Germany in the 16th century and quickly became popular in other areas. The Twelve Blessings of Christmas. The Advent calendar was first used by Lutherans in the early 19th century. Early printed Advent calendars had Bible verses behind little cardboard doors. Moravian Christmas in the South. A candle-related custom called Christingle appeared sometime in the nineteenth century in British Moravian services.
Celebrating Life Customs around the World: From Baby Showers to Funerals [3 volumes].
Christmas controversies
Paradise of the Pacific. Christmas was abolished by the Puritans when in power, because it had largely become an orgy of dissipation. Archived from the original on 21 November The History of the Puritans. William Baynes and Son.
G.K. Chesterton on the true meaning of Christmas | Damsel of the Faith
They disapproved of the observation of sundry of the church-festivals or holidays, as having no foundation in Scripture, or primitive antiquity. Retrieved 28 December The Puritan War on Christmas —60". Archived from the original on 10 March Its History, Festivities and Carols. The Victorian Christmas Book. Domestic Annals of Scotland. A Study in National Culture. The New York Times. Retrieved 15 December From to , anyone caught celebrating Christmas in the colony would be fined five shillings. Retrieved 18 December Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday. The Ritual Year in England.
There is no doubt that A Christmas Carol is first and foremost a story concerned with the Christian gospel of liberation by the grace of God, and with incarnational religion which refuses to drive a wedge between the world of spirit and the world of matter. Both the Christmas dinners and the Christmas dinner-carriers are blessed; the cornucopia of Christmas food and feasting reflects both the goodness of creation and the joy of heaven. It is a significant sign of a shift in theological emphasis in the nineteenth century from a stress on the Atonement to a stress on the Incarnation, a stress which found outward and visible form in the sacramentalism of the Oxford Movement, the development of richer and more symbolic forms of worship, the building of neo-Gothic churches, and the revival and increasing centrality of the keeping of Christmas itself as a Christian festival.
By the later part of the century cathedrals provided special services and musical events, and might have revived ancient special charities for the poor — though we must not forget the problems for large: The popularity of Dickens' A Christmas Carol played a significant part in the changing consciousness of Christmas and the way in which it was celebrated. The popularity of his public readings of the story is an indication of how much it resonated with the contemporary mood, and contributed to the increasing place of the Christmas celebration in both secular and religious ways that was firmly established by the end of the nineteenth century.
Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. What Dickens did advocate in his story was "the spirit of Christmas. It excoriated individual selfishness and extolled the virtues of brotherhood, kindness, and generosity at Christmas. Dickens preached that at Christmas men should forget self and think of others, especially the poor and the unfortunate.
The Battle for Christmas. Lewis wrote of his revulsion for the commercialization of "Xmas" in several personal letters. Once, when asked about his view on the holiday, he wrote This is important and obligatory for Christians; but as it can be of no interest to anyone else, I shall naturally say no more of it here. But the third thing called Christmas is unfortunately everyone's business. I mean of course the commercial racket'.
G.K. Chesterton on the true meaning of Christmas
A Lost Chapter from Herodotus". Archived from the original on 25 May Religious Policy in the Soviet Union. The League sallied forth to save the day from this putative religious revival. Antireligioznik obliged with so many articles that it devoted an entire section of its annual index for to anti-religious training in the schools. More such material followed in , and a flood of it the next year. It recommended what Lenin and others earlier had explicitly condemned—carnivals, farces, and games to intimidate and purge the youth of religious belief. It suggested that pupils campaign against customs associated with Christmas including Christmas trees and Easter.
Some schools, the League approvingly reported, staged an anti-religious day on the 31st of each month. Not teachers but the League's local set the programme for this special occasion. As observed by Nicholas Brianchaninov, writing in —, after the NEP and just as the worst of collectivization was beginning, the Soviets deemed it necessary to drive into the heads of the people the axiom that religion was the synthesis of everything most harmful to humanity.