The Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 12

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A couple of years ago, my friends the Kings had me over for Christmas lunch. Lunch turned into afternoon coffee and snacks, which then turned into late afternoon chatting and yawning. I remember noticing that there were still presents under the tree even though Christmas morning had been over for several hours. The King children were young, and I wouldn’t have expected them to be so uninterested in their little packages.

“We usually only have them open on or two gifts at a time,” Hannah told me when I asked. “We don’t want them to get into a gift opening frenzy.”

“Frenzy” has often been the word that I would have used to describe the Christmas season. It is a time of intensity, with bright lights and shiny packages. If you watch Hallmark movies looking for “frenzy” or “intensity”, you’ll see it almost immediately. The colors are a little too bright, the plot points a little too shiny. Everything happens in a fixed, predictable way, which you would expect to feel safe and non-threatening, which it does, sort of. It also feels strangely frenetic, as if everyone is afraid they won’t be able to get to the next plot point in time. They rush around until the two leads finally get together in some kind of awkward declaration of affection which is meant to be sweet and meaningful, but feels so very empty that you wonder if robots were involved in the writing process.

Yes, I know. That is kind of the point of a Hallmark or Netflix Christmas movie.

But if the point is to get drunk on the bright lights and shiny wrapping for a day, I don’t want that. I don’t want the frenzy.

As I’ve been focusing on celebrating twelve days instead of just one or two of the Christmas, I have pondered this idea of slow unwrapping. I opened gifts on Christmas Day, and it was really fun. My parents bought me new baking pans, cooling sheets, and a very, very nice pastry cutter. Each day since then, as I’ve been at home nursing my sick body, doing something small and celebratory has felt like a little piece of chocolate. I drank a special glass of wine. I put gifts in boxes. I wrote notes to friends. I played music to remind me of Christ’s coming. I prayed prayers centered around Christ’s birth. Turns out that celebrations that feel like a slow unwrapping are a lot more fun.

There was a sense of mystery about it all, too, because I was not only contemplating Christ’s coming, but also how Christ changes everything by His arrival. Every ordinary thing- music, walking, being with family and friends, having a meal, breathing- is transformed by His unprecedented birth and made extraordinary. The dark is set alight by His glorious appearing.

I think this intense light is perhaps what all of those Hallmark movies are attempting to recreate. I don’t blame them for trying.

Celebrating the 12 Days, even in small ways, has been a really good and joy deepening experience. I know I want to do something like this again next year, although I may not write about it every single day if I do. It’s fun to share beauty with the world, and it’s also nice to have some space. So I may take that for myself next year.

Today, as I finished the last chapter of The Dark Is Rising, I was very moved by this line that Cooper uses:

…there was no break in the music that was in Will’s head, for now it had changed into that haunting, bell-like phrase that came always with the opening of the Doors or any great change that might alter the lives of the Old Ones. Will clenched his fists as he listened, yearning towards the sweet beckoning sound that was the space between waking and dreaming, yesterday and tomorrow, memory and imagining.”

I think a good celebration can also do what this music does for Will. It can remind us that we do not belong to this place, not entirely. We live in the waiting and the doing, the already and the not yet.

Merry Christmas!

The Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 5

There’s a story I’ve heard about St. Thomas Becket, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, being martyred at an evening mass in Canterbury Cathedral. As a child, I was obsessed with Henry VIII child and read that Becket was martyred during his reign. I hadn’t realized that it happened in the sanctuary of a cathedral, though.

Because Becket died during what should have been a vespers service, singing carols and praying felt like an appropriate way to commemorate today. (I also added a small glass of wine to the proceedings).

There are so many carols that I love it is hard to pick one. Music is made more difficult by brain fog (I’m still sick). But music is a great force of healing, so the brain fog does not matter as much. Even humming or tapping a rhythm makes me happier and clears the fog away, for a time. There are a lot of old favorites: Silent Night, The First Noel, The Holly and the Ivy, and I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. I did a lot of singing this December and it always makes the Christmas time that much more special. I wish more people would celebrate the twelve days of Christmas so we could keep singing all of these carols. So many of them express the beauty of Christ’s coming through the lens of different cultures. Silent Night is German, The First Noel is French, the Holly and the Ivy is English, and I Heard the Bells is American. For next year, I would love to research and learn carols from other parts of the world.

Here’s one of my favorite settings of a Christmas carol. This is called the Huron carol, and it is believed to be one of the first songs written by Christians in the New World.

For prayer time, my brain felt foggy still, so I opted to use Douglas McKelvey’s Every Moment Holy to help me focus.

Two of my favorites prayers that I used tonight are from his Sundry Moments section. I prayed this one for members of my family.

God, as I hold ______ a moment in my thoughts

I ask that you would hold them eternally in Yours,

remaining ever at work in their heart and life,

even now directing their paths toward Your good ends.

This one is for being moved by a song or a piece of music. It felt very appropriate for a night where I sang carols and listened to choirs.

O Lord, let such melodies penetrate my heart’s defenses,

gently revealing old wounds unto their eventual healings,

gently stirring eternal longings unto the restoration of hope.

Tune my heart, my mind, my life,

to voice your melodies, O God.

I hope this day finds you well and still celebrating the birth of our Lord. Merry Christmas!

The Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 3

I had planned to celebrate the feast of Saint Stephen today, and then discovered that it is actually supposed to be Saint John. Unless I to use the Orthodox calendar, in which case it is still the Feast of Saint Stephen. Naturally, rather than choosing between two saints, I went with celebrating both.

My original plan involved drinking wine with friends and dropping off donations. I was going to listen to good music and dance around the kitchen. However, I woke up sick and have spent most of the day in bed. It can be hard to celebrate when you feel more like sleeping for the next two days. Christ is the great healer, though. I am not feeling well and I can still meditate on the fact that He has come to redeem everything, especially my sick body.

When I had a bit more energy, I read over the account of Stephen’s death in Acts. I was struck by how much detail Luke brings to his account. In story telling, writers talk about a scene carrying its weight. You want dialogue and action in the scene to do more than one job. If it’s only doing one thing, it isn’t very interesting.

The account of Stephen’s trial carries its own weight and more. First, it establishes the history of Israel and why Stephen believes that all of it points to Christ. Second, it establishes why the leaders disagree with him and find him so dangerous: if he is right, they murdered the Messiah. Third, it sets up the violence to come by telling us about Stephen’s murder at the hands of the priests. Luke seems to be saying, “Make no mistake, reader. These ideas are dangerous.” Fourth, it introduces us to Saul, later to be called Paul. He is the most unlikely side character in this scene to do anything for Christ, and yet the book of Acts follows him and his ultimate conversion closely. It’s very good storytelling.

As Stephen is dying, he prays for the people who killed him. When I was younger I wondered how Luke could have known about that since he wasn’t there. But Paul was there, and he must have told Luke all of it. I wonder what that must have been like for him.

St. John is a bit different. He lost so many friends to deaths like Stephen’s, and managed to outlive them all.He endured imprisonment on a lonely island and also had to write down one of the strangest prophecies in Scripture. Say what you will about prophecies all being weird. This one is very long and very odd. He was so faithful, though, all the way to the end, in spite of the strange visions and the lonely island. I hope I can love Christ like that.

My day of celebration didn’t involve drinking wine with friends. Instead, I thought about two men who died many years ago. I still drank some wine, but the day felt somber. Maybe that’s the point, though. Not all feast days have to be full of laughter and charcuterie boards and Yule logs and dancing. They can also involve a simple prayer and a simple glass of wine.

Happy feasting. And Merry Christmas!

The Twelve Days of Christmas: Day 1 and Day 2

Last year some friends of mine invited me to a small, impromptu Twelfth Night gathering. There were only four of us, and we had the merriest time playing games and talking about our new year. We turned off all the lights and watched as a cake was doused in rum and then lit aflame with a sudden whoosh.

It put me in mind of how there is so much joy in observing rituals. It is a power I do not wish to ignore. This year, I have decided to celebrate the twelve days of Christmas by doing something special on each day leading up to Twelfth Night.

I often have trouble celebrating. There is a little voice inside that whispers, “You can do more work when this is done.” It makes me want to rush through and not savor what is in front of me. As a result, this practice of drawing the celebrating out for nearly two weeks is a tough one. I have decided to try and celebrate in some small way many things that Christ has redeemed by his coming to earth.

For Christmas Day, I went to a morning service at my church. This was not how I was raised. We had church on Sunday during Christmas Week, but not the day of Christmas. There may have been some reminder of Christmas coming, with carol singing and a focus on a passage from one of the Gospels.

This year, though, I had weeks of Advent readings poured over me, the better to sit and soak. At Lessons and Carols the night before, I felt deeply that Christ is real and present, a light shining in what often feels like a very dark and desolate world. We sang a song about the day of peace that dimly shines ahead of us. It felt very near this year. There was a flame lit inside everyone at the Christmas service the next morning. It stayed with me all day.

I celebrated with friends over a long brunch. We had eggs, pão de queijo (Brazilian cheese puffs), coffee, and scones. Then gift giving, memory sharing, and a shared contemplation of Christ’s coming. This was followed by the most beautiful Yule log I have ever seen and small glasses of brandy. T’was a good celebration: rich, delightful, and deep.

Today, the second day of my Twelve Days of Christmas, is what is traditionally known as Boxing Day. I used to picture men in boxers swinging punches at one another accompanied by the deep baying of boxer dogs. “Boxing Day”. I was wrong. Boxing Day comes to us from the practice of boxing things up and giving them to people. There is also record of staff for English aristocracy having the day after Christmas off. This was when they received their “boxes” or gifts.

Today, in the spirit of this Boxing Day practice, I went through my closet and drawers and chose items to donate. It was a good reminder: whenever I give something away it is only because Christ has given it to me first. I do not have to be afraid of giving things away because in Christ there is all the abundance I could ever need.

I also have one book that is providing structure for me: The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper. Someone mentioned this as a book to read during the Twelve Days because it is set during the winter in an English village. It also has thirteen chapters. I started it on Christmas Eve, and have read one chapter a day since then. I like having it as a sort of prop because reading only one chapter a day works against my usual inclination to eat a book of this size in one glorious, reading soaked afternoon. I also have more time to sit with what Susan Cooper is doing through the story. I look forward to writing more about it at the end of the Twelve Days.

Farewell for now!