Pope Francis says Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, Dec. 24, 2021 / Vatican Media
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 5, 2022 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
“And I keep my Christmas lights on, on my front porch all year long/and I know all the words to every Charlie Daniels song…”
While Gretchen Wilson was probably (hopefully?) not being literal in the lyrics to her 2004 Grammy Award-winning single “Redneck Woman,” she actually has a bit of a point. There’s nothing wrong with keeping the Christmas decorations up longer than December and keeping the Christmas spirit flowing past December 25.
But just how many days is Christmas? When should you finally take those lights off the porch, or remove the tree? Read on for some of the arguments for and against commonly agreed-upon end dates for Christmas.
“Christmas is one day”
This, of course, is the simplest answer. Christmas is typically celebrated on Dec. 25 for most of the world, and on Jan. 7 for Churches using the Julian calendar, and on Jan. 6 for yet another, considerably smaller, part of the world. On this day, the liturgy celebrated is the “Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord.” Priests wear white vestments on Christmas, which is different from the violet they wear during Advent.
So there you have it. Christmas is one day, either at the end of December or in the first week of January.
Or is it?
“Christmas is eight days”
There’s also an argument to be made that Christmas is eight crazy nights eight days long. The Church regards Christmas as an octave, or eight-day celebration. The octave of Christmas begins on the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord and concludes on the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God on Jan. 1.
During the eight days of Christmas, clergy wear white, except during the St. Stephen’s Day and the Feast of the Holy Innocents, when they wear red.
In a liturgical sense, Christmas is eight days.
But wait, there’s myrrh!
“Christmas is 12 days”
We’ve all heard the Christmas carol “Twelve Days of Christmas.” While it’s unclear as to why someone would give someone 23 separate birds, a pear tree, and the services of 50 people over a 12-day period, there actually is a liturgical precedent for claiming that Christmas is 12 days long.
Twelve days after Christmas is the Feast of the Epiphany. This day marks when the Magi arrived to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and gave Jesus the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
In the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, Epiphany celebrates the revelation that Jesus was the Son of God. It focuses primarily on this revelation to the Three Wise Men, but also in his baptism in the Jordan River and at the wedding at Cana.
In the Eastern rites of the Catholic Church, Theophany – as Epiphany is known in the East – commemorates the manifestation of Jesus’ divinity at his Baptism in the River Jordan.
But here’s where it gets a little confusing: While the traditional date for the feast is Jan. 6, in the United States, the celebration of Epiphany is moved to the second Sunday after Christmas in the Novus Ordo.
During the 12 days of Christmas, clergy wear white, except during the St. Stephen’s Day and the Feast of the Holy Innocents, when they wear red.
So, there. By the liturgical calendar, one can argue Christmas is also 12 days.
“Christmas ends January 13”
In the usus antiquior of the Roman rite, per the general rubrics of the Roman Breviary, “Christmastide” includes both “the season of Christmas” – the 12 days seen earlier – and “the season of Epiphany” – the eight days from the Epiphany on Jan. 6 to the commemoration of the Baptism of the Lord on Jan. 13.
And what is now called the season of Epiphany was, until 1955, observed as the Octave of the Epiphany.
What do the U.S. bishops say?
According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the liturgical season of Christmas ends with the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord.
The Baptism of Christ, which the USCCB states is the end of Christmas, is observed on the first Sunday after Jan. 6 in the Novus Ordo.
After the Baptism of Christ, clergy are to wear the green vestments of Ordinary Time.
What about other customs?
“Christmas is from the day after Thanksgiving until Jan. 15”
In the eyes of my condominium association, that is.
While most places do not have a hard-and-fast date like my complex, it is not uncommon for regions to have either secular or religious traditions centered around Christmas decorations.
For instance, in Colorado, it is supposedly customary to keep Christmas lights up until after the National Western Stock Show, which goes until the third week of January.
In parts of the world that do not observe Thanksgiving in November, Christmas markets open around the second week of November, kicking off the holiday season.
In these cases, Christmas is synonymous with “start of winter. Ish.”
In the liturgical calendar, clergy wear violet and rose vestments during Advent, followed by the white and red of the Octave of Christmas.
Does the celebration of Christmas always have to start in winter?
Here’s looking at you, Southern Hemisphere.
“Christmas goes from mid-October until after the first week of January”
This is only true if you are decorating a Disney theme park.
There is no liturgical or traditional basis for this timeline. However, the decorations are nice, the mood is festive, and I’m not going to complain.
What’s the absolute last possible concrete day of Christmas?
“Christmas is until Candlemas”
Now we’re talking.
Candlemas, or the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, is Feb. 2. On this day, many Catholics bring candles to the church to be blessed. They can then light these candles at home during prayer or difficult times as a symbol of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World.
Candlemas is the last day that the Alma Redemptoris Mater is the Marian antiphon appended to hours of the Divine Office. The Alma Redemptoris Mater is used from the beginning of Advent through Feb. 2, and so Candlemas has come to be associated with the close of the Christmas season.
Candlemas is still observed with public, Christmas-esque celebrations throughout the world, including in Peru, Puerto Rico, France, and Belgium.
On the other hand, Septuagesima Sunday – which is definitely not part of Christmas – has been known to fall before Feb. 2, giving the lie to the ‘Christmas is until Candlemas’ party.
Is that all, though?
“If there is love in your heart and your mind, you will feel like Christmas all the time”
Now you’re just singing the lyrics to Faith Hill’s “Where Are You Christmas.”
To be clear, this song is a bop, but it is not exactly relevant for this discussion. Using this line is an excuse, albeit a very creative excuse, for why there’s still a wreath on your door in June. By this point, you’re well into Ordinary Time, and it’s time to put the decorations away.
There should, however, be love in your heart and in your mind at all times, as you are a child of God and loved by your creator.
So when does Christmas end? When should the decorations come down?
That is largely a personal call, based on your own traditions, customs, and other factors. For safety reasons, CNA recommends that you take your tree down as soon as it starts shedding a ton of pine needles, but other than that, there’s an argument for leaving things up as late as Feb. 2. Of course, your neighbors may disagree, but that’s a them problem, not a you problem.
Merry Christmas!
[…]
@ Why they hated Benedict The Critic.
The Peter Hullermann case remains a flaw since the child rapist continued as pastor long after his second arrest by police when serving in Munich. Hullermann later was reinstated and continued until exposed by Der Spiegel. When the issue of Benedict’s legacy was recently assessed on WorldOver Robert Royal answered “at the time, Benedict’s record was acceptable” words to that effect. None of our best pontiffs were perfect.
Author Paul Sapper goes directly to philosophy after defending Benedict’s record against accusations. Although he doesn’t clearly define the nexus with Benedict regarding, for example, David Hume. Sapper quotes Hume’s premise that Man knows primarily through the senses secondarily and less certain via the intellect. Hume was correct regarding the senses not regarding the intellect. Man in accord with Aristotle and Aquinas identify sense perception as the first principle of all knowledge. Although apprehension of the moral good or evil of an act, requiring sensible perception is simultaneously an apprehension of the intellect’s inherent capacity to distinguish between good and evil, inherent as prescient knowledge realized in the act of apprehension [reasoned deliberation generally preceding] of the morality of the given act.
I haven’t come across Benedict acknowledging this process, Benedict generally in favor of the thought of Augustine. Josef Pieper is among the few who have acknowledged Aquinas’ doctrine of intuitive moral apprehension. Otherwise Benedict was in tandem with the moral intellectual thought of Aquinas.
Benedict was a great intellectual with superb acumen, that inherent gift came through regardless of a specifying philosophy in his work, for this writer seen in his identity of truth, ultimately in all its variations to the self revelation of God in the Person of Christ.
#4 Active Participation:
We read of the “Frascati report…the product of two weeks’ worth of work in late September by its authors at a retreat center in Frascati, Italy, not far from Rome. It was there that a few dozen select interpreters—mostly theologians—were asked to ‘authentically’ synthesize …” etc., etc., etc.!
The interpreters, mostly theologians (authentic!)—cast elsewhere as “experts” (all genuflect!) except for one window-dressing bishop—Are they now to replace the “hierarchical communion” (Lumen gentium), synodally marginalized “primarily as facilitators”?
The Apostolic Succession—the new “periphery”! Parsing Orwell: all peripheries are equal, but some peripheries are more equal than others. Behold, soon their “continental” “syntheses” (!) will be spin-cycled into a homogenized kitchen-blender plebiscite, thrown up (so to speak) at the fluid Synod on Synodality.
Ressourcement and aggiornamento—pioneered by the Council and worked now by three popes, but now running off course. Ice berg ahead! Captain to the bridge! If there is a bridge…
@Police State Tentacles
Michael Lesher Brownstone Institute rediscovered meaningful Judaism in Orthodox Judaism rather than Conservative, which is more humanistic than religious. Apparently intuiting [from my perspective] the entirely radical transformation of American Liberty, the once political light of the world, into the police state polity. Why, he asks, do we not defend liberty?
Response to this question may best be answered by borrowing a title from another article Driven by Catholics, the work of many fighting for the lives of the innocent. Whereas Liberty in once freedom loving America has been driven to the extreme dictatorship and all the horrors of the police state primarily by whom? By Catholics. Politics Biden, Pelosi, Durbin, [Ed] Kennedy, Judiciary A Kennedy, Church McElroy, Tobin [the elder] et al. All have left the traditional God of the Gospels and convinced themselves of a better God, a god who cherishes liberty. In effect the concept of Liberty is deified. Catholics, traditionally convinced in the unsurpassable good of the divinity possessed an unusual fervor, though tempered by justice.
The new found faith in the god goddess [we must watch our pronouns] of Liberty anomalously possesses no justification in the limitation of the practice of Liberty, nor limitation in the defense of goddess Liberty. Restrictions on a free press, the right to worship Christ with its limitations to behavior as well as its [coercive] requirements becomes the enemy of limitless Liberty. Voila the police state, the restrictive, punitive laws, the expected [looming before us] incarcerations.
A great anomaly. Vatican polity seems to favor the new found version of liberty oriented Catholicism. What must we do? Steel the will and prepare for sanctification.
Pope Benedict XVI was right. Atheist scientists are hiding the truth about the subatomic particle ‘double slit’ experiment. One hundred years ago, in the double slit experiment, scientists discovered that the universe does not exist when man is not looking at it. According to factual science, our realities are only a Creation from our All Powerful God, which only come into physical existence, when we go to look, touch, smell, hear, taste, them. When we are not experiencing our universe, as when we are sleeping, our universe does not exist. Though your unconscious body may still exist in other people’s, individual, shared, reality from God. God’s Creation is so scientifically counterintuitive that atheist scientists easily hide from Christianity, the scientifically proven fact that the universe does not exist when man is not looking at it.
Neils bohr VS Albert Einstein. Neils Bohr says that there is no universe when a conscious man is not looking at it. Albert Einstein says, “I’d like to think the moon was there even when I wasn’t looking at it.” After over a century of fierce debate and mountains of scientific research to settle this debate, Neils Bohr’s ‘ ‘Peek A Boo’ universe, a universe which does not exist when man is not looking at it, is dominating the debate, over Albert Einstein’s “I’d like to think the moon was there even when I wasn’t looking at it.”, ‘Realism”. By the end of the PBS video, the narrator indicates that there is only a slim chance that Albert Einstein’s ‘Realism’ can be salvaged. Proven science says there is no universe when Adamkind is not looking at it and experiencing it.
https://youtu.be/tafGL02EUOA
Proven science has now shown us that our reality is more like a tv picture, with God holding the remote control. God can show two different people, two different realities, using the same subatomic particles of the universe.
Science has now observed multiple realities, from two different observers observing the same subatomic particles. In the lab, scientists have mimicked ‘The miracle of the Sun’, where 60000 people witnessed one reality, while the rest of the world witnessed an alternative reality. Wow!
Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it.
https://www.technologyreview.com/…/a-quantum…/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4IbOzuNlmE
Neils Bohr, “It is meaningless to assign Reality to the universe in the absence of observation; in the intervals between measurement, quantum systems truly exist as a fuzzy mixture of all possible properties.”
Subatomic particles make up everything physical in the universe. Science has proven, through the double slit experiment, that all subatomic particles exist only as a wave of all possibilities. It is only when Adamkind, look, touch, hear, smell, that subatomic particles switch to become specific physical particles, and put themselves together to make up all that we physically sense in the universe.
Like our Omnipresent to all physical time God, so do subatomic particles carry all possible physical time, presents, pasts and futures in their makeup, which scientists see as the ‘Multiverse’. It is only a specific, present, past and future, which becomes a specific Reality to an individual, when that individual observes them. The combined Realities of all people on earth then becomes our combined timeline history. There is only one timeline with a multiverse of possibilities at any given moment.
When you look at a star 13.8 billion light years away, it is only at the moment you look at the star, that a specific past, present and future comes into existence for that star. Yes! Proven science tells us that a star, even 13 billion light years away, knows when Adamkind is looking at it, and it is Adamkind looking at it which causes ‘wave collapse’, which is subatomic particles putting themselves together to build a star, for Adamkind to look at. Wow! When the star is no longer observed, it no longer exists as a collection of physical subatomic particles, and we are simply back to a soup of all possibilities.
The universe is just a soup of all possibilities, until Adamkind, conscious observers, open their eyes and senses to see, touch, hear and smell the universe. Once Adamkind goes to experience our universe, this is when subatomic particles switch into physical particles, joined together to make up our physical universe reality. Different people can have different realities, which do not collapse into a common reality, until the two different people tell one another what they are experiencing. Once an observer opens their eyes, this is when subatomic particles go back in physical time to make up a specific, past, present and future, reality. How on earth can atheist scientists not see that it takes God to do all this! It is their atheist pride, of course.
Science has proven that, If there was a universe six days before Adam opened his eyes to look at it, it would have to be a six day miracle from God. This is because it takes conscious man to cause ‘wave collapse’, which ‘wave collapse’ is subatomic particles switching to become physical particles, to build complex structures, for Adamkind to look at and experience. The universe and Adamkind are linked together and you cannot have one without the other, unless it is a miracle from God.
An Electron cannot ‘evolve’ to know how to go back in physical time, to produce an individual Reality, for an individual observer, which collapses into a common Reality with another individual’s Reality, when they share their realities with one another. ‘Scientism’,’ Realism’, atheist scientists are deceiving the world away from our All Powerful God.
A few verses on reality! We ponder, yet God provides us with comprehension if we are willing to humble ourselves and listen to what He is saying.
1 Corinthians 2:14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
Philippians 4:8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Romans 1:20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Psalm 27:1-4 Of David. The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet I will be confident. One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.
Blessings
Hello Brian,
Very good Biblical quotes!
It is the pride of atheist scientists which leads them into error.
Albert Einstein (Determinism) says,
“God does not throw dice!”
Neils Bohr (Chance) replies,
“Nor is it our business to prescribe to God how He should run the world.”
Albert Einstein hated the fact that, if Quantum Mechanics sees everything in the quantum world, (subatomic particles), as ‘chance’, ‘weird’, ‘in determinant’, yet we get high precision at our macro level of the world we experience, this is because God is controlling everything, at the Quantum level, every millisecond of the day. It is not by ‘chance’ that the world is the way that it is; It is God very actively making the world the way that it is, every millisecond of the day.
Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein were actually good friends and colleagues. Neils Bohr just accepted proven science at the subatomic level and then used this knowledge to go to bank on inventions and discoveries, like computers, x ray machines and the like. While Albert Einstein fought God at the subatomic level. Niels Bohr felt bad for his good friend Albert Einstein, who wasted his later decades of life, focused on trying to debunk the scientifically proven fact that the universe does not exist when man is not looking at it, which meant that there is a God controlling everything in the universe. Now, 100 years later, we see that Albert Einstein has failed.
Battle over Quantum Mechanics Albert Einstein VS Neils Bohr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBgC0PyIomU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj7jd7opGOQ
Always a pleasure to read your words at CWR.
In my twenties, enjoyed reading the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer. In one of his novels he maintained that Einstein had plagiariized the idea of the theory of relativity. Whether or not this is the case, he did work in the Swiss Patent Office. Perhaps none of his colleagues understood the concept that had been submitted. Yet, he not only understood it but was able to formulate the logical sequence of events and present it. Of course this is only speculation on my part, never the less, why would Singer otherwise offer the argument?
We should acknowledge God as the author, as all great ideas come from the Lord, yet man likes to take the credit.
Blessings,
Brian
So true!
Thanks Brian.
I think Albert Einstein, as a science patent clerk, started to see all the repetitive physical time variations, in the massive amount of scientific data, from multiple patent claimants research, and then figured out what was causing the repetitive physical time variations. He then published his ‘Theory of Relativity’. I see no foul play in doing so. Einstein was simply in the right place to feed off all the modern scientific data research of others, and apply it to his ‘Theory of Relativity’, which was unrelated to what the patent claimants were filing for.
But Yes! Albert Einstein being angry with God, “God does not throw dice!”, for leaving nothing but ‘chance’, indetermination and chaos, below the level where God Himself Creates the infinite wonder of our massive universe in all its precision, through ‘wave collapse’, is a catastrophic blow to Atheist scientists. Atheist scientists have nowhere to go. Christian Scientists who believe in God as our Creator, on the other hand, “Oh! There is the Hand of God our Creator!”
Would like to hear more of what the physicists Einstein and Bohr had to say about metaphysics, if anything…
As in, if a guy in a white robe averts his eyes from the ultrasound, does the child not “exist” and the pending abortion not actually happen? You know the line: “it’s [only] my body!” Or as in, if I do not see you, do you even exist? As in, I am “the All Powerful God”!
Metaphysics is about stuff being organized within the next level up, not only the next level down (e.g., only waves and particles and multiple universes). Can we think in both of these dimensions? Is it possible to walk and chew gum at the same time? This multi-layered question even applies to churchy stuff like a prevalent version of synodally “synthesizing” (!) our “walking together.” Synthesis, what’s that, Real-ly?
Modern sophistry no longer depends on clever argument. Impressionistic language bleaches the mind from coherent challenges since there was never any coherent content in the original propositions.