Xmas vs Christmas: Which holiday are you going to celebrate?

First off, I just want to make it clear that the majority of the ideas I choose to express this week are not necessarily original to me. While I am sure that many share these ideas, I have been indulging myself this Advent season by once again turning to C.S. Lewis for a bit of inspiration and philosophical advice. I read his essay called Xmas and Christmas, a lost chapter from Herodotus. It takes a look at modern times from the point of view of someone who is completely ignorant both of Christianity and of modern culture during the Xmas/Christmas season.. People spend an oddly large amount of time preparing for Xmas. One Xmas tradition involves sending little pieces of paper with images stamped on them to all of their friends, relatives, acquaintances and anyone else who might think about sending them a card. The images on the cards are of beautiful winter scenes, birds sitting in trees, people dressed as they did 200 years ago and riding around in coaches and on horseback. What, exactly these images have to do with the actual celebration of Xmas is a religious secret so closely guarded that no one will explain to an outsider. Given how much time and effort are spent on the cards though, it is obvious that they a very key part of Xmas. If they get a card from someone whom they failed to send a card to themselves, they stress out, utter curses at the sender, and trudge back out the door to by more Xmas cards. Sending gifts to each other is even more a painful and important a part of Xmas as are the cards. People go out and buy each other all kinds of things that they would never buy or want for themselves. The merchants and shopkeepers get into the spirit by selling all of the items that they were unable to sell during the rest of the year under the label of Holiday Special. All this is called the Rush. But when the day of Xmas actually comes around, everyone is so tired from preparing for it that they lay around in bed until noon and then get up and eat 5 times as much food as on a normal day and drink wine until they are too intoxicated to remember all the time and money they spent on Xmas. Such are the customs of Xmas. There are some, however who celebrate the festival of Crissmas on the same day that everyone else is celebrating Xmas. Those who celebrate Crissmas do so in the opposite way of those who celebrate Xmas. They rise early in the morning and go to their temples where they partake in their sacred feast. Many of their temples are filled with sacred images of a woman and her child, which are part of their sacred story. Some think that Xmas and Christmas are the same, since they are celebrated on the same day. This, of course, makes no sense whatsoever. First off, the images on Xmas cards have nothing to do with the sacred story the priests tell of Crissmas. And secondly, most people, not really believe in the religion of the few, nonetheless participate in the sending of cards and gifts and participate in the Rush and drink and feast. It does not stand to reason that anyone should suffer so many things in honor of a God they do not believe in..
I really enjoyed the entire essay by Lewis, and if you have the time I recommend that you read it here. It isn’t too long and it does a much better job of conveying Lewis’ wit and charm then I could ever hope to do.

Tis the season to be... preparing?

As Advent progresses and the count down until we celebrate the birth of the redeemer of the universe continues, one thing seems to remain the same in our culture, the constant fight between the holiday season and the Christmas season. Every year this miniature battle over
whether or not it is legal to have a nativity scene visible in a public area without paying proper respect to every single other religion. Or if you should even be allowed to force your intolerant Christian beliefs down every one else’s throat with that unwholesomely holy looking baby in a manger. Now as you all know, I am never one to lose my cool and fly into a rant about such things. I have often been complimented on being the very heart and soul of calm and rational discussion and just agreeing to disagree. Or something like that. But I know how easy it is for some of us to get really uptight over a simple Seasons Greetings or to snap off someone's head over an unintentional (and probably well meant) Happy Holidays. I think sometimes we tend to focus so much on what words people use to describe the few days surrounding Christmas that we lose track of what Advent and Christmas are really all about. Indecently, when was the last time
anyone got mad at a bell ringer for failing to wish them a Joyous Yuletide or a Convivial Advent? All in all I think that bickering over the use of names and terms is worse than useless if we fail to actually live out what we claim to be arguing for. We can all claim to hate the idea of how consumerism tends to dominate the entire Advent season, but how much money do we spend on Christmas gifts and do most of us even own an Advent wreath? If you do, and you actually sit down with your family every night and focus on what Advent is all about, then I think you are a step ahead of many of us, myself included. We think that jamming a plastic manger scene into our front lawns somehow makes it ok to reject what God has revealed to us about the sacredness of marriage or the fact that human life begins at conception. Are we truly living out the faith that we tend to get so defensive about when our relatives send us holiday greeting cards instead of Christmas cards? As we enter into this second week of Advent I strongly encourage all of you to be the voice of Advent in your family. Get an Advent wreath and take some time to sit down and pray with your family. Shut off the TV and spend some quality time with our Lord. Christmas
comes but once a year, but the love of God is eternal. Focus on that.

Issues of Reconciliation

As far as everyday reception of the sacraments is concerned, the Sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation is one that many of our protestant friends really have a difficult time accepting. The big, and dare I say obvious, question that usually comes up quite quickly is this, Why would you go confess your sins to a priest? Don’t you know that it is God who has the power to forgive sins? The first place we need to go in Scripture is Jn 20:19-23 where Jesus appears to the Apostles , after the Resurrection, breathes on them, and tells them, “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained." This passage begs the question, why would Jesus give his Apostles the power to forgive sins if they were just supposed to keep that power to themselves? What would be the point? Logically we can gather that Christ wanted his Apostles to actually use the power and authority he gave them to continue his work on earth after his Ascension. Paul gives us a specific example of this mission in 2 Corinthians 5:17-20 when he tells the community in Corinth, “So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” This is the mission Christ has sent us on, a mission where the forgiveness of sins is central. And just as the mission of the Church did not end with the original Apostles, neither did the authority Christ gave them. It was passed on to their successors, modern day bishops and priests. Finally we can also look at James 5:13-16 Where James tells the people to call a presbyter (priest) if anyone is sick and they should anoint him with oil and pray for him, and his sins will be forgiven. James then follows this by commanding us, “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed “ James flat out tells us to confess our sins to one another. And what would be the point unless at least some actually had the authority to forgive those sins? Ultimately it breaks down to this. God gave us the sacrament of confession for the forgiveness , why should we pretend like we know a better way than his?