We Have Christmas Backwards

We have Christmas all backwards. Yesterday, December 25, is not supposed to be the end of the Christmas season but the beginning. Instead we have moved the celebration of Christmas, to the days and weeks leading to Christmas, which is supposed to be a period of penance, fasting, and prayer. We do the opposite of that, and then we wonder why it feels empty and unfulfilling so much of the time.

Then after Christmas, when we should be just beginning a twelve-day season of joyous celebration, we take down our decorations and go back to our humdrum lives. We live our barrenness after, rather than before. 

This is part of the general trend of reversal of all things Christian, especially Christmas. This year I went through the entire Christmas season and saw not a single mention of the baby Jesus outside of the few weak Christmas carols sung on the Great American Family Network, which split off from the Hallmark Channel specifically for cultural reasons having to do with same-sex relationships in their movies.  We have reached the triumph of a completely secular Christmas stripped of all its Christian significance. Our Christmas carols are now original pop creations of Maria Carey (its melody unsingable by anyone but someone with her talent), and the rather monotonous one by Paul McCartney. They aren't bad songs. They were humorous novelties when they appeared. Now they are the entire songbook, along with other secular modern ones. The ones referencing Christ is not diminished. They are completely gone from Pop Culture.

So its no wonder we have Christmas all backwards. People burn themselves out celebrating during Advent and then wonder why the magic isn't there. Our conceit is that the human soul (and body) can be re-engineered in arbitrary ways. Who cares if the celebration is beforehand? We are stupid I think. God will have His Advent from us, one way or another, just as He will have His sabbath, and his Jubilee. We can cooperate with that, our we can try to defy it, but the score must be evened out.

I personally am enjoying the second day of Christmas as I write this, and am thinking of what I will still give as Christmas gifts this year, up until Day Twelve. The world may have blown itself out during Advent, but I am just getting started being Christmasy.