Welcome back everyone! How was your Thanksgiving? All the food came out great here! Family and friends said I did a great job on cooking my first turkey, and they were right it was wonderful. It's amazing how quickly the holidays come and go. My family was blessed again this holiday season with another member of the family. My sister Linda had a beautiful boy the night before Thanksgiving. His name is John Anthony the second. Well, Now it's time to focus on another beautiful Holiday. Have you ever wondered when does Christmas really start, or better yet how about the history of Advent? These are some of the things I have included this week. See you all soon.
When does the holiday season really start?
If retail promotions are any indication, Christmas begins as soon as the last bags of Halloween candy have been moved to the bargain bins. Our Christian ancestors, however, had other ideas.
The first church official to propose special activities for the pre-Christmas period was Perpetuus, bishop of Tours, in 490. To help his flock prepare for the holiday, he advocated fasting every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from Martinmas (November 11) to Christmas Eve. This practice, which mirrored Lent, spread slowly throughout France, Spain, and Germany. Then it crashed into Rome.
Roman attention to the Advent season trailed Perpetuus by about 100 years, and it took a radically different tone. While much of Western Europe, and at least portions of the Christian East, fasted, Roman Christians celebrated. Perhaps it seemed odd to them to approach Christ's birth as somberly as they did his death. By the eleventh century, though, Rome had come around, and Advent meant no feasts, no recreational travel, no marital relations, and no weddings. (These prohibitions were dropped in recent centuries.)
Sometime in all of this, the start date for Western Advent slid back two weeks, to the Sunday closest to St. Andrew's Day (November 30). As a result, Advent can last anywhere from 22 to 28 days, though for the sake of year-to-year consistency, Advent calendars start with December 1. Yet not everyone kicks off the Christmas season at the same time or in the same way.
In the Orthodox church, Advent still includes fasting, and in most places it lasts from November 15 to December 24. The Armenian Orthodox church is an exception; its members fast for three of the seven weeks between November 15 (St. Philip's Day) and January 6 (Epiphany).
St. Barbara's Day, December 4, signals the beginning of the Christmas season in Syria, Lebanon, and parts of France and Germany. Some Middle Eastern customs for the day resemble American Halloween-children dress up in frightening costumes and go door-to-door collecting candy and other small gifts. This activity has no relationship to the story of St. Barbara, which states that her father locked her in a tower, killed her for her Christian faith, and was then struck by lightning. Not that it matters; historians now doubt that St. Barbara even existed.
St. Nicholas's Day, December 6, inaugurates the Christmas festivities in Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, and parts of Germany. On the night of December 5, St. Nicholas-accompanied, oddly enough, by a little demon-brings gifts for good children, who set out shoes or stockings for him to fill. The Dutch make the biggest production of Nick's arrival, gathering to watch his ship land in Amsterdam, then seeing him off on his flying, white horse. Obviously, a lot of this pageantry crossed over to America, except that our St. Nicholas arrives via the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and doesn't deliver his gifts until December 24.
Swedes wait until St. Lucy's Day, December 13, to commence Christmas observances. Lucy, who supposedly died in Italy in 304, became a Scandinavian favorite when that region converted to Christianity, beginning in about the eleventh century. Lucy's name comes from the Latin word for "light," but, before sixteenth-century calendar reforms, her feast day fell on December 21-the shortest day of the year. Scandinavians were pretty desperate for light around that time, so they latched onto Lucy. Her annual remembrance involves a girl from each household wearing a wreath of lingonberry leaves and lit candles on her head and making an early breakfast for the family.
Strange or silly as some of these customs might seem, I'd rather have my calendar structured around cultural traditions than around corporate budget forecasts. I don't care how much retailers are worried about fourth-quarter earnings. If they play Christmas music before Thanksgiving, they won't get my money.
Information for this article was adapted from the Encyclopedia of Christmas, by Tanya Gulevich (Omnigraphics, 2000It's pretty common to hear complaints about the difficulty of keeping the joy of the Christmas season. Or, more commonly, we hear people talking about how this time of year is (as Andy Williams puts it) "the hap-happiest season of all." The world seems so festive and celebratory this month that we would never dream of complaining about itâ~@~Tafter all, doesn't the world take note of Jesus at this time more than any?
Modern arguments aside, the time before Christmas hasn't always been a celebration. Like the Lenten season before Easter, Advent was once a solemn preparation for Christmas. Actually, not Christmas exactly. Originally it was a season preparing for Epiphany, January 6â~@~Twhich commemorates not Jesus' birth, but his adoration by the Magi (in the West) or his baptism in the Jordan River (in the East). Some people claim Advent was first celebrated by the apostle Peter, but the exact starting date of the season has been lost to history.
Whenever it started, Advent originally was a time of fasting and self-reflection (instead of today's Christmas parties and "thinking about other people for a change.") In the mid-300s, two events changed that thinking: Constantine the Great built the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, declaring Jesus' birthday a national holiday; and Julius, bishop of Rome, set the date as December 25. Christmas took on a happier, more celebratory feel and became a time of joyous anticipation. (By the mid-400s, even the Eastern churchâ~@~Twith a few exceptionsâ~@~Trecognized December 25 as Christmas. However, Advent is still a much more solemn occasion among Orthodox Christians, and the season begins much earlierâ~@~TNovember 15 instead of the Sunday nearest November 30.)
Eventually, the Western church no longer required fasting during Advent, though more liturgical churches still encourage solemnity and discourage festivities. For the church, purple (and blue), not red and green, are this season's colors. Over time, Advent also became an occasion to prepare for Christ's second coming as well as to reflect on his firstâ~@~Twhich worked great for us at the magazine as we prepared an issue on the Second Coming (issue 61).
I hope I don't sound like a wet blanket. We at the magazine are "historically incorrect" too, with Christmas decorations around the office, carols playing softly in the background, and Christmas parties. But as we endeavor to "remember the reason for the season," it's helpful for us to remember that the meaning of the season has changed substantially over the centuries.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream oil, powdered sugar, butter and white sugar. Add eggs and vanilla; cream this mixture very well. Sift flour, baking soda cream of tartar and salt. Add to the creamed mixture and cream well again until thoroughly mixed. CHILL COVERED OVERNIGHT. Roll into balls the size of walnuts. Roll balls in sugar, put on cookie sheet and flatten with a glass dipped in sugar. Bake at 350 degrees for about 11 minutes. Do NOT overbake. This will make about six dozen. MMMMMMmmmmm. More likely five dozen since these cookies mysteriously disappear when kids are around.
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