From Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs by Rev. Francis X. Weiser

Since the Gospel reports the fact of Christ’s circumcision on the eighth day after His birth (Matthew 2, 21), a feast of the liturgy in commemoration of that event might have suggested itself as soon as Christmas was established on December 25.

It took four centuries, however, until this feast was actually introduced into the Roman liturgy, and then it came from the outside, from the churches in France that had already celebrated it for two hundred years.

In the East, too, the Feast of the Circumcision is not mentioned in any calendar before the eighth century. This reluctance to introduce a feast the object and date of which were so clearly given in the Bible might have been due in some degree to the fact that circumcision had been replaced by the Sacrament of Baptism in the New Testament.

The main reason, however, doubtlessly was the secular New Year’s celebration that took place in the whole Roman Empire on January 1, and which contained so many objectionable elements that the Church authorities did not want to make that day an official feast and thereby encourage the holiday mood of the faithful.

This is indicated by the fact that in the early centuries January 1 was kept as a day of fasting and penance. “During these days, when they [the pagans] revel, we observe a fast in order to cry and pray for them,” said Saint Augustine in a sermon on New Year’s Day.

Not only in Rome, but also in Gaul, Spain, and Greece the calends of January presented great problems of religious discipline to the authorities of the Church.

During the sixth and seventh centuries various councils in France strictly forbade participation in those revels. Such prohibitions had to be repeated many times by the bishops in their respective dioceses.

The faithful were told to hold private penitential processions (litaniae) in penance and atonement for the excesses and sins committed by so many.

In Spain, the fourth Council of Toledo ( 633 ) prescribed a strict fast and abstinence for January 1, and the Alleluia was omitted from the liturgical texts in token of penance.

As late as the eighth century, the people in Rome spent New Year’s night reveling and dancing in the streets, thereby scandalizing the pious pilgrims from northern countries.

If so much public rejoicing happened at a time when Rome was completely Christian, it is no wonder that in earlier centuries the popes would not hold a solemn feast, with its customary Station processions, on January 1 when crowds of pagans, and some irresponsible Christians, roamed the city with frivolous dancing, wild carousing, and indecorous masquerades.

OCTAVE OF THE NATIVITY

While the popes and bishops in the Christian empire of Rome abstained from introducing a solemn feast on the calends of January, there was a strong inclination to distinguish the day not only by fasting but also by a prayerful and official celebration in church.

Since the people by tradition were in a festive mood, it seemed appropriate to gather them for a special service in the house of God to direct their hearts and minds to the Lord in a devout and quiet, but impressive, way.

Saint Augustine had already felt this when he beheld a large congregation gathered in church on January 1: “I see that you have come here as if we had a feast today.”

When the last remnants of paganism had disappeared, January 1 was made a ranking liturgical feast, shortly after the beginning of the seventh century, probably under Pope Boniface IV.

In imitation of the Easter, and Epiphany Octave it became the “Octave Day” of Christmas. This distinction, however, was applied in a lesser degree, since the eighth day as such, and not the whole week, as at Easter, received the liturgical character of the main feast.

Of the ancient liturgical books, the Sacramentarium Gelasianum (seventh century) contains the first entry of this feast under the simple title Octava Domini (Octave Day of the Lord).

FEAST OF MARY

Soon after the Octave of Christmas had been introduced, the celebration of January 1 assumed a Marian character. This was due to the Station of the papal service, which was the church of St. Mary beyond the Tiber, the oldest Roman church dedicated to the Mother of God.

Thus New Year’s Day became a special memorial of Mary. In the old Roman calendars it is called Natale Sanctae Mariae. ( The word natale here means simply “feast”.) In a certain sense this was the earliest feast of our Lady in the Latin Church.

Interesting is the emphasis placed on Mary’s maternity, that she is truly the Mother of Him Who was made flesh for our salvation. The character of January 1 as a feast of Mary is still preserved in the Station title; the Mass prayers, too, and the texts of the Divine Office reflect the Marian note of the feast up to this day.

CIRCUMCISION

The celebration of our Lord’s circumcision started in the Church of Gaul, where we find the earliest records of this feast about the middle of the sixth century.

From Gaul it spread to Spain and into the Frankish empire, and from there to Rome in the ninth century.

In the Greek Church it had already been introduced during the eighth century. Today all Eastern Rites celebrating the Nativity on December 25 also keep a Feast of the Circumcision on January 1.

The new celebration soon overshadowed the Octave of Christmas in the Roman liturgy, but did not entirely supplant it. Up to this day the official title (in the Latin Church) is a combination of both liturgical festivals: “The Circumcision of Our Lord and Octave of the Nativity.”

Because the Divine Child received the name Jesus at the circumcision, this day was also connected in the Middle Ages with special devotions in honor of the Holy Name.

Saint Bernard (1444), by both word and example, promoted the veneration of the sacred name of Jesus with great zeal. The famous hymn Jesu Dulcis Memoria (How sweet the thought of Jesus ), which he composed, is still used in the Divine Office.

In 1721 Pope Innocent III established a separate feast in honor of the Holy Name of Jesus. Pope Saint Pius X (1914) fixed its present date: on Sunday between January 1 and 6, or on January 2 if no Sunday occurs.

The Catholics of the Greek-Slavonic and Armenian Rites have kept January 1 as the Feast of the Holy Name in addition to the Circumcision.

NEW YEAR

The liturgical texts take no notice at all of January 1 as the beginning of a new civic year. This is probably due to the pagan and objectionable character of the ancient Roman New Year’s celebration, which prevented the authorities of the Church from even mentioning that aspect in the sacred service of divine worship.

In the Diocese of Toledo, Spain, however, January 1 bore the official title Caput Anni (Beginning of the Year) in the liturgical books of the seventh century.

FOLKLORE RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE

The end of the old and the beginning of a new year was, and still is, marked by popular devotional exercises. Special services are held in many churches on the eve of New Year’s to thank God for all His favors in the past year and to implore His blessings for the new one.

In rural sections of central Europe many families spend the minutes around midnight saying the rosary or other prayers, and all the church bells peal “to ring out the old and ring in the new year.”

In France and French Canada a custom coming down from medieval times is the blessing of the family. The father makes the sign of the cross on the foreheads of his kneeling family, wife and children, in token of God’s blessing for the new year.

In other Catholic sections of Europe parents bless their children with the sign of the cross at midnight. This custom of parental blessing, which is practiced also on many other occasions during the year, was a universal tradition in all countries before the Reformation.

In the towns of the Alpine sections of Austria and Germany it is a widespread custom for a little brass band to play Christmas carols and other religious hymns from the tower of the local church, or for groups of carol singers to go from street to street and “sing in the new year.”

In some places these carol singers are mounted on horses, riding from farm to farm during New Year’s night.

SYLVESTER CELEBRATION

The popular festival on New Year’s Eve is called “Sylvester” in many countries. The word is derived, of course, from the liturgical observance of December 31, the Feast of Saint Sylvester.

Besides the traditional and familiar reveling celebration in our modern cities, many ancient customs are still practiced in European countries.

In Spanish-speaking sections it is an old tradition to eat twelve grapes at midnight, one at each stroke of the tower bell.

In central Europe the new year is greeted with the cracking of whips, shooting of rifles and mortars, and with banging and clanging noises in the home. This is a relic of the pre-Christian ritual of “driving demons away”; its original significance, however, has been forgotten, and it is now practiced as a salute to the new year.

Sylvester Night is one of the great nights for all kinds of traditional oracle games to find out what the year will bring. Tea leaves are read in many places. In central Europe spoonfuls of molten lead are poured into water, and the fantastic shapes of the congealing metal are supposed to reveal or symbolize events of the coming year.

Girls especially are looking for apparitions and oracles disclosing the young man who will come to love and marry them. Superstitions claim that his likeness will show through the mirror in the darkened room at midnight, or that he will appear to them in a dream.

These oracles are usually connected with Saint Sylvester, thus giving them the character of a devotional practice rather than a mere superstition.

The saint is asked in traditional rhyme prayers to exercise his patronage and provide a husband. And it is from his kindly favor that girls expect to see the picture in their dreams or in the mirror.

PRESENT-GIVING

The old Roman practice of giving presents at the beginning of a new year (strenae) has survived in all Latin countries, and so has the name (etrennes in France, estrenas in Spain ).

The date, however, is now January 6 in Italy and in Spanish-speaking countries; only in France has January 1 been retained as the day of giving presents to children.

A general custom in many countries is the giving of money or presents on, or after, New Year’s Day to persons who make regular deliveries to the home ( such as the milkman, letter carrier, and paper boy ) .

A recent practice, which started spontaneously some years ago and may be found in many cities of Europe, is the custom among motorists of leaving presents at the stands of traffic policemen. These packages are then taken to the police station and distributed among the families of all traffic policemen within the precinct.

 

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On feasting & the difference on how saints feasted vs how we do today….

 

 

 

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I WISH YOU A MARY CHRISTMAS

by REVEREND GEORGE L. KANE

Perhaps you think I’ve made a mistake in spelling. Or you may decide I’m indulging in a play on words. But there is no mistake in spelling, and my play on words is based solely on a desire to play down the kind of Christmas frequently associated with the word merry and to play up the kind of Christmas inevitably associated with the name Mary. In other words, I wish you the kind of Christmas Mary, the mother of Christ, would wish you.

But first let me assure you that it is normal to be merry at Christmas, for Christmas is the happiest of all birthdays. It commemorates not only the birth of Christ, the beginning of His life on earth, but also the rebirth of every man in Christ.

Angels celebrated the occasion with celestial music which was for man the opening movement of a symphony of divine love, marking God’s fulfillment of His promise to send man a Savior. Little wonder, then, that the whole season surrounding Christmas has become synonymous with jubilation.

But too often the merriment in evidence at Christmas is far from being an excess of joy or an overflow of happiness. For the ruthless exploitation and the over-commercialism of Love’s anniversary have dulled the edge of the season’s happiness for millions of people.

True Christmas joy can be born only of hope, but the anxieties, the tensions, and the stresses involved in today’s preparations for the Feast more often resemble a flight from hope, a journey into frustration.

The tragedy of all this becomes evident when we consider that the soul of Christmas joy is the thrilling fact recorded in Sacred Scripture, “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you, who is Christ the Lord.” These are the divinely-inspired words which at Christmas quicken in the human heart an ecstasy unknown at any other time.

ANXIETIES AND TENSIONS

But when he is the victim of a hundred pressures, it is hard for modern man to be ecstatic. With his peace of mind assailed on every side, he finds it difficult to recall that true peace of soul, the promised peace of Christmas, can be possessed only by one who stands before God with a conscience free from serious sin.

Modern advertising has brain-washed him into forgetting that true joy does not result from the selection of an ideal gift for everyone on his shopping list; rather is it a quality of a heart in love with God. Yes, in our day the stresses and strains of the festive season have affected almost everyone to a greater or less degree.

They have even penetrated the family circle. And though Christmas is and always was the feast of home and family, and men go to great lengths to keep it so, the frenzy of the season makes the modern family despair of recapturing a measure of the rapture experienced by the Holy Family in Bethlehem. And their efforts to have a Merry Christmas are largely to blame.

One phase of this trend is seen in the over-emphasis on Christmas shopping. As December 25 approaches, greater and greater crowds throng the stores, struggling and shoving, examining goods, making purchases.

Harried clerks rush about waiting on customers, displaying and demonstrating merchandise, wrapping and tying packages, trying to maintain their composure against losing odds.

No doubt many people will be made merry by the gifts they receive. But what a travesty of Christmas if any gift is given from an empty heart. On the first Christmas God gave His only-begotten Son because “He so loved the world,” but this Christmas Helen will give Sally a gift because she hopes for one in return, and Jim will yield to social pressure and exchange gifts with a fellow-worker he hardly knows.

One man became so weary of the frustration of giving a shirt and getting a shirt, of giving cigars and getting cigars, that one Christmas he sent cards to his friends saying that he planned to give to charity in their name the amount he formerly spent on gifts for them. His friends liked the idea. They liked it so much, in fact, that they adopted it themselves. From that man’s gesture almost $1,500 is now given each Christmas to orphans, the sick, the hungry, and the needy.

Though this man was comfortable in his own home, he did not let his curtains drawn against the cold deaden the cry of suffering from the outside world. While enjoying the warmth of his fire on winter nights, he did not forget that many people were denied that comfort.

He had so hated the commercialism of the Christmas season, the terrific pressures and the insane methods of making it merry that he had grown to dislike the Feast itself. But when he stopped to think about it, he readily realized that what he really hated was the way it was celebrated by so many people.

They were, in fact, being manipulated like puppets on the strings of big business, social custom and human respect. This man cut the strings and set out to observe a Mary Christmas.

A MERRY CHRISTMAS?

But even when we have said all this, we have not said the worst about the modern concept of a Merry Christmas. In many so-called sophisticated circles there is the inevitable “office party” at which business executives and their staff celebrate the Feast. No reasonable person is opposed to parties, and employees especially appreciate an annual display of warmth and friendliness from their employers.

Didn’t the Infant Savior come to earth to save all men, and didn’t He welcome to Bethlehem both Kings and Shepherds? Nothing could be more fitting, therefore, than for the kings of modern business and the shepherds from their offices to come together and celebrate His birthday. But the ordinary Christmas office party is hardly reminiscent of Bethlehem, and the type of pagan entertainment provided at some such parties may do honor to Bacchus and Venus, but it is an insult to Christ, a blasphemy and a sacrilege.

Those who thus dishonor the sacred Christmas season have lost all concept of the meaning of the divine love that wrought Bethlehem’s miracle; indeed, for them celebrating Christmas is a mockery of that love.

Even apart from the wrong kind of office party, an increasing number of people associate a Merry Christmas with the exhilaration and intoxication that the excessive use of liquor produces. The only Christmas spirit they know is in bottles, and throughout the Holy Season they are likely to be to a greater or less extent under its influence.

On the first Christmas God came among men to elevate them to a share in His own divine life; and now on its anniversary many of them degrade themselves lower than the brutes. When a father or mother, a son or daughter spends Christmas in a drunken stupor and disrupts the peace and harmony of the home, the happiest day of the year is made one of the saddest for the other members of the family. Such arrogant selfishness and supreme self-indulgence defile and desecrate Christ’s birthday. A Merry Christmas? For whom?

THE BIRTHDAY WITH A DIFFERENCE

But we need not describe further the world’s distorted notion of a Merry Christmas. Rather, do I want to describe God’s notion of a Mary Christmas.

Let us not forget that Christmas is the anniversary of the day on which God came into the world as man, the day on which time and eternity met and heaven and earth joined hands.

Christmas is the birthday with a difference. When we celebrate a friend’s birthday, we rejoice with him because he has lived another year, because he has attained the age of forty-six or fifty-eight. We seldom think of the day on which he was born forty-six or fifty-eight years ago. We do not think of him as he was then, as a new-born babe. We think of him as he is here and now, as a man of forty-six or fifty-eight.

In this respect Christmas is very different, even unique. Christmas is the birthday of Christ, the anniversary of the day on which the Savior of the world was born. And now, almost 2,000 years after His birth, Christmas evokes an image not of a Young Man in the thirties who died on a cross, but of a newborn Infant lying in a manger.

It is thus that He is pictured in Christmas art and represented in Christmas song and story. In other words, in celebrating Christmas, we are concerned not with the anniversary of the day of Christ’s birth, but with the very day itself.

God’s love was so beautifully expressed by coming to earth as the Babe of Bethlehem that we want to retain that expression; at least we want to recapture it once each year.

And there is another point of difference between our observance of a friend’s birthday and our celebration of Christ’s. A person can have a birthday only because someone gave him birth, and nothing should be more natural at a birthday party than that reference be made to the mother of the guest of honor, the one who made it possible for him to have a birthday. But such reference is seldom made.

That is where Christmas differs again from other birthdays. An infant is normally associated with his mother, and we cannot separate the Infant Savior from Mary. In our representations of the Christmas story in art and in our retelling of it in words Mary is always present; she either holds the Infant Savior in her arms or kneels beside His manger-crib. The world would not have it otherwise.

The most beautiful and most perfect Christmas anyone ever celebrated was a Mary Christmas, the first Christmas in which Mary played so prominent a role, the first Christmas when Mary herself celebrated the day of days.

For a Mary Christmas is the kind of Christmas God Himself arranged, and He then inspired the Evangelists to tell the world about it in simple but sublime language.

I hope that during this Christmas season you will take down your family Bible and read the second chapter of St. Luke and the first two chapters of St. Matthew. You will notice that in both accounts of Christ’s infancy Mary is prominently mentioned. In other words, God’s own first Christmas on earth was a Mary Christmas.

GOD MADE THE CHOICE

There is another point that we are inclined to overlook. God was the only son in the history of the human race who had the privilege and the opportunity of choosing His own mother, and Mary was the object of His divine choice. That privilege was the prerogative of the Creator alone.

God’s plan for the redemption of the human race, a plan made from all eternity, involved His own coming into the world as man, and He needed a human mother to give Him birth. He would choose her, fashion and form her according to His own specifications, and then ask her to accept the sublime dignity.

As any of us would do, God gave her a soul that was spotless, a heart completely in tune with His, a will in perfect conformity to His own. In fact, He made her the embodiment of beauty, grace, understanding, perfection. God’s choice was made in eternity, and in the fullness of time it was announced to the one who had been chosen.

It is now almost 2,000 years since, in preparation for the first Mary Christmas, God sent His great Archangel Gabriel speeding to earth with His greeting and His message to Mary of Nazareth. “Hail, full of grace,” the Angel spoke in God’s words. “The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women.”

When Mary had somewhat recovered from her initial fear and astonishment, a brief dialogue followed in which Gabriel outlined the divine plan. The Messiah was to be the Son of God, and Mary had been chosen to be His mother. She would conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit and, though becoming a mother, she would remain a virgin.

Seeing the only obstacle removed and recognizing the Angel’s message as the manifest will of God, Mary humbly consented, “Behold the hand-maid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word.” The Incarnation took place, and the Son of God and His mother waited in anticipation of the first Mary Christmas.

Nine months later Mary gave birth to her Divine Son in the little town of Bethlehem. Though the world was unconcerned and indifferent to His coming, God sent a celestial choir to the nearby hillside to chant the most beautiful and melodious of all Christmas carols, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.”

A few Shepherds invited by the Angel and a few Wise Men directed by the star hastened to Bethlehem to greet and worship the Savior of the world. Certainly the Infant appreciated the sentiments of both Shepherds and Wise Men, but above all He delighted in the love of His own mother.

In heaven He had had the adoration of legions of angels, but now on earth He experienced a mother’s love for the first time. And no one loved this Child as His mother did. No one understood Him so completely.

Every other mother who caresses the young life that has been born to her looks up to heaven to thank God for His gift, but Mary looked down for she had heaven nestling in her arms—her Son and her God.

WHAT A MARY CHRISTMAS MEANS

St. Luke implies that on the night of Christ’s birth the Shepherds related the events to everyone they met. “All who heard marveled at the things told them by the shepherds.”

In contrast, the same sacred writer records that “Mary kept in mind all these things, pondering them in her heart.”

We will have a Mary Christmas if, like Mary, we ponder the meaning and the mystery of God made man. Such thoughts will stir in our hearts a greater response to God’s love. And we will more fully realize that it was the greatest possible gift that God gave us on the first Christmas. We will learn that the song of the angels was no mere cradle song, but a call to action to all men of good will.

For we will naturally express our love in action, in service of God and of our fellowmen. We will have a Mary Christmas if we radiate the warmth of charity. Christmas gift-giving is traditional, of course, for it dates back to the first Christmas when God the Father gave His Son to the world and the Magi gave their treasures to the newborn King.

But we too often give gifts to those who have everything, not often enough to those who have nothing.

I was delighted with the reply of a five-year-old son of fairly well-to-do parents when asked what he wanted for Christmas, “Don’t give me nothing. I got too much already.”

Most of us will visit our friends and make them welcome in our homes, but in memory of the helplessness of the Infant Savior we must include in our visits those who are helpless—the shut-ins, the sick and the aged.

It is frequently said by adults that Christmas is only for children. I repeat that sentiment here, and when I wish you a Mary Christmas I wish you the love and joy with which the season fills the hearts of children.

For we are all God’s children, and at Christmas in a special way we are all Mary’s children. You see, Mary, being the mother of Christ, is also the mother of Christmas.

Join me as I read to you the beautiful meditations of the Christmas Child written by Father Daniel Lord in the 1950’s…

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