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You have to celebrate Christmas. It's
not just enough to believe that this child

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born of a virgin was the logos
from before the ages. Right, we

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can say we believe that all we
want to, but if we don't act

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on that information some way. And
the way that you act on this information

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Taylor referred talks about liturgy and like, let's say you talked about the feast,

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the act of celebration as being like
a song. Right, So the

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song has a melody like a think
of like a little melody, has sequential

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moments, you know, all these
different notes and everything, but really the

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beginning to the end of that song
all happened at the same moment because it's

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a unit. So if you don't
sing the song, then you're not Actually

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you have no way of participating in
it in that moment. And if you

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don't celebrate Christmas, then the moment, this holy moment, right, this

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moment with Heaven and Earth everything comes
together into this point, right, that

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moment just passes you by and pretty
soon you stop believing at all. This

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is Jonathan Peshel Welcome to the symbolic
world. So hello everyone, I am

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back here with Richard Roland for another
episode of Universal History. As all of

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you know, Richard and I wrapped
up a major course on be Wolf where

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Richard took us through very convincingly why
bey Wolf is a Christian poem, and

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if you watch it, you'll see
at the end, I myself have a

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like a mouth of Gaate like he
just at the end of you. There's

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no doubt it just like all comes
together. It's very beautiful. So you

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can still check that out. By
the way, if you're interested, the

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course is gonna stay on for sale
on the website, so you can check

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that out. But today we are
going to talk about Christmas, about the

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kind of how Christmas came together as
a peace in the church, why it's

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so important, you know, why
we celebrate Christmas the way we do today,

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and so it's gonna be it's going
to be a great episode. Thanks

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for coming on, Richard. Glad
to be here. This is one of

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my personal like hobby horses, is
defending Christmas. I'm a I'm a I'm

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a staunch veteran of the Christmas Wars. For a little context about this,

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maybe some people remember if you were
if you are like a fundamentalist Protestant,

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especially living in the South, like
the Southern US. I like, I

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like how Americans we say thus South
as this is the only South. But

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I guess, I guess people say
that everywhere. But anyway, but if

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you're living in the southern US,
you might have been familiar, like you

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might have grown up in like the
worship wars wars. So the Worship Wars

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was like the big kind of like
maybe you have those other places too.

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I just didn't grow up there where, you know. It was like do

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we do like a praise band or
a piano in hymns or like a piano

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and organ ors? You know,
this kind of debate about this kind of

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stuff. Like my family was in
the trenches of all that stuff when I

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was a kid, but then as
I grew up and eventually, you know,

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it was on past oral staff for
several years. One day, one

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day somebody came to me very upset
and said, well, somebody has put

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up a Christmas tree in the like
the fourier of the church. And I

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was like, well, it's it's
December, so we we do that every

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year, and h it kind of
I was. I was totally flabbergasted,

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you could say, like like very
caught off guard, why would this be

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a problem. And but that kind
of that kind of initiated a multi year

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I don't say struggle, but but
a period that I sometimes kind of refer

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to my wife and I refer to
as the Christmas Wars, which had to

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do with which had to do with
some people, not all just at that

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church, but just like in our
lives, et cetera, really really going

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hard trying to get people to stop
celebrating Christmas. And it's the usual sort

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of stuff. It's a it's a
pig of a holiday, it's a it's

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too Catholic, et cetera, et
cetera. And so that is one of

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the things that caused me to like
really dig my heels in and start studying.

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Actually that was right before I started
working on what eventually became a master's

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and essentially medieval literature. But it
caused me to, yeah, like that

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was one of the things that got
me to start like really did my heels

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in and be like, all right, well, if this is really a

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Roman Catholic thing, then gosh started
I'm going to understand why, you know,

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you know, as opposed to just
say, oh, well that's Catholic.

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So toss that, so it's it's
a weird it's a weird thing.

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Like studying and sort of fighting for
the celebration of Christmas is actually probably why

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I'm orthodox interesting in a weird way. That's like a part of my story

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that I don't think i've I've ever
shared before publicly, but but you know,

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that's one of the things that got
me to, you know, really

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think about what it means to have
tradition, of what it means to celebrate

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and there's a part of there was
a part of my conversion experience that was

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certainly intellectual, right, but the
much more important part was as we were

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converting as a family, especially for
my wife, was the embodied part of

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it. And for us actually really
deciding we need to take not just Christmas,

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but like advents seriously and do these
certain things. And then later on

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Lent and Easter, like deciding that
we needed to find some way to make

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these times kind of special as a
family and start participating in the cinema embodied

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way was a really important turning point
for our family. It's interesting. I

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just want to say something what you
said. It's interesting because this holiday war

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that we see, it's a strange
place where secular atheist types and fundamentalists hold

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hands in their arguments. And to
be fair, not all fundamentalists, because

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again the family that I grew up
in super big, but like some fundamentalist

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really very particularly strained of fundamentalists.
Like I know a lot of people that

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were in that camp, like an
anti Christmas camp when I was younger.

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They ended up moving towards Jewish holidays. Ultimately. Yeah, yeah, that's

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one of the things we'll talk about
a little bit later. And actually for

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people who want to go back to
last year's video, last year we did

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a video was a sequel to the
Groundhog Day video where we looked at the

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four winter feasts, of the four
great winter Feasts of the Church. I

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kind of talked about how those are
fulfillments of Hanukkah, of the festival of

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the rededication of the Temple, and
the rededication of the Temple of the Cosmos.

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I'm not going to repeat myself on
a lot of that stuff today because

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watch it. People can go back
and watch that. But so all this

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to say, this is like a
it's a very you know, passionate subject

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for me. So I'm excited to
talk about it today. So we're gonna

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do this in two parts. I
want to talk about a little bit about

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how we got to have the kind
of Christmas celebration that we have today,

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which is which is understanding that everybody, you know, different families do things

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a little bit differently. Broadly speaking, there are certain things which if you

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live in North America and you celebrate
Christmas, there's certain things that you're you're

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doing that you're you're doing, and
you're doing them every year. Even if

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you're not doing them. You know
some of them specifically, they're all around

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you. They're in all of the
Christmas movies, They're in all of the

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like the the you know, you
can't get away from it, the grocery

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store, the uh, the home
improvement store, the mall, like all

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these things, right, you can't. There's certain things you can't get away

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from. So I want to kind
of talk about how we got to that

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Christmas yeah and uh and then also
look at some of the historical attempts to

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abolish Christmas and uh and what.
And then basically the second half of the

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view was talking about why that has
it work? Why is sticky? Is

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Christmas so sticky that we can't seem
to help ourselves when it comes to celebrating

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it. So that's where we're going
to go, all right, So I

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want to be again with just talking
about the essence of the feasts. This

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is you know, in some respects
the most obvious part, and yet it's

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so it's it's weird because it's so
obvious, like we constantly feel like every

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year, I mean, you know, six of my neighbors right now have

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a have a put you know,
keep christ in Christmas kind of a thing

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out in their yard with a Nativity
scene and stuff. And it's great.

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I love it, you know,
I really love just all the statues of

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Jesus and Mary everywhere this time of
year. You know, it's great.

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And now I really am serious about
that. We'll come to that in a

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little bit. But I think it
is actually kind of this beautiful return to

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tradition that you see happening, you
know, even in you know, the

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Deep South. So yeah, it's
a it's an unconscious return to tradition,

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you know, in very unsuspected place, and that has to do with that

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stickiness that we're going to talk about. But but I just want to start

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with like the fundamental essence of the
feast, which I think will help us

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understand why it is as sticky as
it is. And that is it's the

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it's the ultimate expression of the pattern
of the high becoming low. Right.

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And and I know this is a
pattern you talk about a lot. People

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who are we're talking about this the
other day, right, people who are

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like on this channel a lot,
or in the various discussions around this part

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of the internet think about this pattern
a lot. But this is the ultimate

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expression of this pattern, right,
And it it what it does, is

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it manifests this pattern, you could
say, like more evocatively than almost anything

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else except for the Crucifixion. Yeah, right, right, And so I

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just want to read something real quick. This is from you know, uh,

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this is from our festal hymns for
the feasts and the Orthodox Church.

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But this actually comes from this is
just a setting into verse of a mostly

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already metrical homily or oration that was
given by Saint Gregory the Theologian on the

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on the occasion of Theophany slash Nativity, which, as I'm going to it'splaining

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in a moment used to be a
celebrated on the same day. So this

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it says Christ is born. Glorify
him. Christ comes from Heaven. Go

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to meet him. Christ is on
earth, Be exalted. Seem to the

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Lord all the earth, and praise
him and gladness, o people, for

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he has been glorified to the son
begotten of the Father before all ages,

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and incarnate of the version without seed
in these latter days, to Christ,

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our God. Let us cry out, you have raised up our horn.

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Holy are you, o Lord stam
and flower of the root of Jesse.

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You have blossomed from the Virgin,
O Christ, from the mountain overshadowed by

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the forest. That's an image from
the song with Tobacco, which the Church

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traditionally ascribes to the Virgin Mary.
From the mountain, overshadowed by the forest.

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You have come made flesh from her
who knew no man, Oh,

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God, not formed from matter.
Glory to your power, O Lord.

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I behold a strange, most glorious
mystery heaven, the cave, the Druvik

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throne, the Virgin, the manger, a place where Christ lay, the

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uncontainable God whom we magnify in song. So this is like the really the

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key kind of the center of our
celebration, and it comes from a much

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longer oration that Saint Gregory gave on
this feast, and he talks about a

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lot of things that are I really
encourage people to go and read this.

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You can find it in his festal
Orations. The excerpt that was just reading

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there comes from a book called The
Winter Pasca, which is just a really

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great kind of a reader written by
Father Thomas Howko back in the day on

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the various feasts of the winter season. And in each these chapter is like

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maybe two or three pages, and
there's forty of them, so yeah,

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it's just a really lovely little reader. But he talks about a lot of

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pins. He talks about, actually, how should we celebrate the feast?

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Don't celebrate it like the Pagans,
that is, with drunkenness. We're going

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to talk about drunkenness specifically today because
it comes up a lot, as it

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happens in talking about the historical celebrations
of Christmas, but not to celebrate it

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as Pagans, but instead of celebrate
it soberly as Christians, by which of

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course Saint Gregory means go to church, feed the poor, right and and

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then you know, yeah, enjoy
yourself as well, but don't uh you

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know, don't engage in the kind
of revel rates the Pagans engage in.

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And there's a lot of beautiful themes
in this homily, right, the high

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becoming the lowest thing. I mean, there's nothing weaker or less, uh,

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less powerful than a Jewish baby in
the you know, in the Roman

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Empire. Right, you know this, you don't get any weaker, any

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poorer, any less significant than that, right. Uh. The on the

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one of the other major images that
we find in the ancient hymns, both

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in the East end of the West, is the the uncontainable, the idea

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of the something that can't be contained
being contained right in the Virgin in a

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major and so on. And then
of course you know, for us as

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Christians, the deep significance which you'll
find many of the True Father's talking about

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a Christ of being laid in a
food trough, right as as you know,

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like this is I mean, it's
very very sort of evident eucharistic imagery,

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right, foreshadowing foreshadowing that. So
and the images like really images of

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the of the tent, of the
of the arc of the covenant. There

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in that that TEXTI wrote, like
between the Cherubim and everything, like,

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yes, understanding that there there's a
relationship between the glory of God descending in

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the temple and Christ being born out
of the Virgin, right, pretty yeah,

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yeah, this is really important.
I mean, this is the the

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I mean, like the most common
Orthodox hymn about the Theotokus is like the

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more honorable in the Cherubim. Right. Well to that to understand why that's

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not just a nice thing that we
say because we like Mary, Right,

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you really have to look at hymns
like this hymn of the feast right where

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we're saying, right, the Virgin
becomes the cherubc throne. Right, So

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like the Cherubim, they carry the
throne. Well, but she's the throne,

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right, And that's why she's more
honorable than them, right, because

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she's the throne now, and she
becomes the throne in like the most like

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earthy literal way possible because she's the
baby is sitting at her lap. Right.

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This is one of the earliest images
that we have of the Virgin from

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the catacombs in Rome. Is this
is the adoration of the magi, right,

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and which is the which was originally, by the way, was originally

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the focus of the Christmas celebration in
the West, we'll talk about we'll talk

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about how how Christmas gets some kind
of split out from Theophony and epiphety in

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just a second. And then,
of course, one of the other major

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themes, and again I just said, if people come back and watch that

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video we did last year, one
of the major themes here is the idea

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of the restoration of the Temple of
the Cosmos, right, and it's it's

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sort of linked its ties to the
Old Testament feast of the Restoration or the

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festival of lights with nowadays is called
Hanuka. So so that being said,

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let me talk about the Christian and
Medieval celebrations of the peace. So originally

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Christmas and Theophany or Christmas at Epiphany
fifty in the West, Theophany in the

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East. They have different emphasies,
but they're the same feast. And I'm

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just going to probably call it seophony
the rest of our conversation, but I'm

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really including both. I mean,
the differentiation of emphasis is very ancient,

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as you know. So Theophany focused
mainly on the baptism of Christ, fifty

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focused mainly on the otoration of the
magi. Yeah, but it was also

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like I think that the idea of
the early feast was something like the feast

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of the revelation of Light. That's
right, that's right. I mean that's

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the earliest, that's the earliest thing
light. It's the feast of Light,

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right, the festival of Light and
of Chris. When Saint Gregory is is

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is delivering that festal oration, that's
the occasion on what she's doing it,

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Yeah, which is why like there's
all while those images come together, right

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the moment when Christ is first recognized
in the world, So the magi,

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the the the baptism, but then
also like the wedding of kind of for

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example, would be mentioned in those
early feasts, and so like all these

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moments before Christ revealed themselves fully the
glibber of light appearing in the incarnation really

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like everything culminating up to the baptism, right, that the whole kind of

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episode, which is where two of
the gospels start, right, two of

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the gospels just begin of the baptism, which is an important detail. So

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yeah, so originally this is all
kind of one feasts and actually in ar

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media and Christianity is still celebrated this
way, right, all on one single

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feast. What happens beginning in the
mid fourth century is that the celebration of

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Christmas gets to sort of split out
out from Epiphany Theophony into two feasts which

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are twelve days apart. And the
reason for this is basically arianism. So

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arianism is the it's these sort of
you know, the archeresey as far as

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Christians are concerned, right, it's
this teaching that the Son was a creature,

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that he was not eternally begotten.
It does not necessarily the teaching that

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Jesus wasn't God, or Jesus wasn't
divine, which is how some people will

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try to explain it sometimes because areas
actually believe Jesus was divine. He just

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believed he was like a divine created
thing like like like like like right,

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a God right, And of course
this creates you know, polytheism and various

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other problems for Christian theology. One
of the permutations of arianism is something called

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a pollinarianism, which is basically this
idea that and there there are a few

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different versions of this, right,
but it's basically the idea that Jesus is

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just like a normal good person.
And then at some point and most people

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who believe the set at the baptism, the Logos comes in and fills him,

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right, yeah, sometimes yeah,
yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

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And a lot of these things,
I mean there was like adoptionism and the

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Aridism and the pollinarianism and a lot
but I mean a lot of these things

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like intersect so much it's not totally
important for our purposes today to like go

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south the individual. The most important
to say that, what was what became

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important for the Christians was to say
that the incarnate Logos was incarnate from the

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moment of conception, not at not
at some later point during this right.

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So that's exactly how this becomes.
You know, if you go back and

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look at those those hymns that I
just read, right, there's this talking

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about how the whole focus is on
how Christ that is born in the manger

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as being adored by the Magi,
right, is already gone before the agent

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worthy of our adoration. Right.
And in this context the gifts of the

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Magi, which is the big focus
of Epiphany in the West, becomes emblematic,

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becomes the emblematic active worship. Right. This this for the total giving

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of ourselves, right, where we
have nothing to give to Christ but ourselves.

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And I'll just say on this note, there's a really wonderful series of

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like Prince. I think they were
done as originally is like postcards by an

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our New Boo artist name. I
think it's Etzio A Nikini and I probably

267
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got his name wrong, but he
was an Italian artist and he did a

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series of of He did a series
of like sort of postcard prints. Well,

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I'll send it to Lisa Leaders who
can put up on the screen.

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Did a series of postcard prints of
like the various titles of the Virgin,

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one of them for the Mater Christi, the Mother of Christ. He did

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the he does the adoration of the
Magi, and it's one of my favorite

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images of the adoration of the Magi
because one of the things they have them

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doing is taking the the incense.
You know, so you got the three

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gifts gold frankincense, and Myrrh right
was taking the frankincense and burning it in

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a censor before the Christ Child.
And I don't know why I never thought

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about that before I saw that image, But of course, I mean,

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if you believe this is this is
God before the what do you do you?

279
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What do you do when you come
to God or even like an emperor

280
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for that matter, right, you
burn incense. Right, it's an active

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worship and active veneration, and so
it's anyway, it's a really beautiful image

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and very evocative in that sense.
Right, So this is the big focus

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of Christmas, right by celebrating it. We're gonna talk at the end of

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the video today about the importance of
celebrating something. Why it's actually not enough

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to just think something, correct,
but you actually have to celebrate it.

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You have to embody it in some
way, right, which, by the

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way, is something that everybody knows, right, even the sort of like

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the the the anti culture right knows
this, right, And that's why you

289
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have to have prima. And that's
why you have to have celebrations. It's

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not just remove celebration, you have
to rebrace them with something that right exactly.

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Yeah, So what happens pretty quickly
is is that we start preparing for

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this great feast with a period of
preparation. And so in the West,

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this used to begin back on November
the eleventh. In the is on November

294
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of fifteenth. Either way, it's
sort of a forty day fast. In

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the West, it was called Saint
Martin's Lent because it originated in the Diocese

296
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of Tours in France. So if
you came to the Bailwolf class, you

297
00:21:19,359 --> 00:21:22,640
will know I made a lot of
jokes at the expense of the French.

298
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But today I have only good things
to say about the French. So so,

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yeah, well, it is Christmas, Jonathan, it is Christmas.

300
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That's right. Yeah, I'm gonna
have good things to say about Martin Luther

301
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as well, So there you go. Yeah. So, so if you

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go back and look at the sixth
century councils in the West, starting in

303
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France, the Council of Tours and
then kind of spreading around there, it

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establishes Advent and Christmas tide as separate
seasons. And it seems like this was

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because people have started to like pre
celebrate a little too much, right,

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which is the thing we do in
our culture. Now. We're like,

307
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well, Christmas on the twenty fifth, that we've got to get all of

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the Christmas parties, the work Christmas
party, and the gym Christmas all in

309
00:22:03,960 --> 00:22:07,160
before Christmas. You got to get
all in before Christmas. Right, Well,

310
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this is apparently a very old problem, and so and so what they

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did is they established they established these
fast as a way of making sure we're

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preparing properly, and then also established
Christmas Tide, the time from Christmas to

313
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a pipe with they offer as being
as being a time of feasting, right,

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and so this is kind of how
it takes the general shape that it

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does. So for instance, the
current Advent season in the West, which

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doesn't start and if everybody eleven starts
on December the first, or like the

317
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first Sunday around there. That dates
back to the late sixth century when months

318
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were required to fast for the first
twenty four days of December, and it

319
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:48,359
seems like this was because they had
been breaking into the Christmas Ao a little

320
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bit early. That's right. Yeah, they had their Advent calendar now that

321
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just has chocolate in it, like
Foo eat chocolate. I like the ones

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00:22:55,799 --> 00:22:57,960
that have just like a little sing
of a different Scotch whiskey in each of

323
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the doors you go. Unfortunately I
can't participate in these, but I think

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it's a neat idea. So so
there's a basic rule of thumb for understanding

325
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why different cultures have different Christmas traditions, and that is the colder your winter

326
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is the bigger deal Christmas is in
your culture, right, And that's that's

327
00:23:21,079 --> 00:23:23,480
more or less true across the board. There's some exceptions to it. But

328
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but put it another way, the
colder your winter is, the more Christmas

329
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customs and traditions your culture will develop, and like the stickier those things will

330
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be. Yeah, And because it's
darker too, right, you have that

331
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sense of this dark moment when the
into which Christ is born. And I've

332
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:45,039
heard some people say something like sometimes
well the Orthodox are really going to celebrate

333
00:23:45,119 --> 00:23:48,960
Paska, they just don't know how
celebrate Christmas or something like this. But

334
00:23:48,039 --> 00:23:52,079
like, go to Ukraine, go
to Russia, go to any of those

335
00:23:52,079 --> 00:23:56,480
like northern European countries where it gets
very cold, very dark, right,

336
00:23:56,119 --> 00:24:00,559
go to even like Serbia and the
Balkans. You'll find all kinds of amazing

337
00:24:00,599 --> 00:24:04,039
Christmas carols, Christmas tradition, stuff
you've never heard of, stuff that's really

338
00:24:04,039 --> 00:24:07,400
similar to stuff it grew up with. So it really has a lot to

339
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:11,519
do with the weather and particularly,
like you said, the amount of darkness

340
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that you have. And I'll say
a little bit here about the connections between

341
00:24:19,079 --> 00:24:22,440
and we said a lot more about
this in our last video. So again

342
00:24:22,559 --> 00:24:26,160
go back and watch that people in
the Groundhog Day video as well. But

343
00:24:26,240 --> 00:24:32,680
the connections between the connections between like
pagan solstice celebrations and this is the thing

344
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:36,119
that everybody has a winter festival.
Absolutely, if you have a winter,

345
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:38,440
you have a winter festivals. Right, And I realized I'm talking kind of

346
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:42,799
mainly about the northern hemisphere right now. I don't know what to do about

347
00:24:42,799 --> 00:24:48,319
that, but you know we can. Yeah, it's sorry. People in

348
00:24:48,359 --> 00:24:49,799
Australia, like I don't, I
don't know what to say, but or

349
00:24:49,839 --> 00:24:53,440
in South Africa, South Africa,
or yeah, yeah, yeah, right

350
00:24:53,920 --> 00:25:00,680
right, But basically, like as
at the light receiving, right, you

351
00:25:00,759 --> 00:25:03,720
get to the deepest, darkest part
of the year, and everybody has this

352
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:11,400
deep cultural it's sort of deeper than
cultural actually, like this really primitive sense

353
00:25:12,000 --> 00:25:15,599
that a festival was needed, that
light is needed, right, Yeah,

354
00:25:17,400 --> 00:25:19,319
we have to light a bond fire. We have to light we have to

355
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:22,839
light the right, Like it's just
inevitable to think that way. Yeah,

356
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:26,720
I have to find the light at
least, we have to like get some

357
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:30,200
hope for the sun to come back. And this seems to be the main

358
00:25:30,359 --> 00:25:34,440
reason for people rejecting the idea that
Chris that Christ might have actually been born

359
00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:37,400
on December the twenty fifth, because
it makes so much sense, because it

360
00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:41,640
makes too much sense, Like that's
too perfect, that goes together too well,

361
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:48,160
right, I would just say,
like, you know, you know

362
00:25:48,240 --> 00:25:53,319
who made the agricultural cycle, who
made the seasons? Right? And and

363
00:25:53,839 --> 00:25:57,839
so for me, it's it's just
this is when light would come into the

364
00:25:57,880 --> 00:26:00,200
world. What else would it have
happened? Right? When else would it

365
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:06,119
have happened? And so a lot
of so all this to say, if

366
00:26:06,119 --> 00:26:11,319
somebody says to me such and such
Christmas tradition, you know, like the

367
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:15,720
Christmas ham or something like this that
goes back to this old Germanic pagan custom

368
00:26:15,759 --> 00:26:21,359
at your or something like this,
okay, all right, but you come

369
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:25,200
over for dinner or what like,
you know, let's you know, yeah,

370
00:26:25,319 --> 00:26:29,480
that's that And really that should not
be a problem for us if you

371
00:26:29,720 --> 00:26:36,599
understand the way that these things work, right and uh oh, so a

372
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:41,240
lot of the traditions that we associate
with Christmas had already started developing by the

373
00:26:41,319 --> 00:26:49,079
late Middle Ages. One of my
favorite tier is Carolyn Right. Uh and

374
00:26:49,079 --> 00:26:55,160
and here I have to say something
which may upset some people. But I

375
00:26:55,160 --> 00:26:56,960
don't mean to all right, and
that is that a carol, isn't it

376
00:26:57,000 --> 00:27:00,240
not the same thing as a himen. Yeah, nowadays, in like modern

377
00:27:00,279 --> 00:27:04,039
English Parlamce, when somebody says at
Christmas carol, they just mean a religious

378
00:27:04,039 --> 00:27:07,200
song that you sing at Christmas time, right, or as a semi religious

379
00:27:07,200 --> 00:27:11,079
song you sing at Christmas time.
It's just like a Christmas song, that's

380
00:27:11,119 --> 00:27:14,519
what we mean by Christmas carol.
But carols are not the same things as

381
00:27:15,240 --> 00:27:18,799
as hymns. And in fact,
carols were not sung in church until about

382
00:27:18,839 --> 00:27:22,680
the later half of the nineteenth century. Really, yeah, not sung and

383
00:27:23,039 --> 00:27:26,839
carolyn not to be stung in church. Yeah, yeah, they're not liturgical.

384
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:32,440
They're not liturgical, and you've got
to sort of think about so actually,

385
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:36,759
sometimes you'll find medieval bishops writing against
the practice of caroling. This is

386
00:27:36,759 --> 00:27:38,400
a little funny to think about because
I know that, you know, some

387
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:42,839
traditions really love their like lessons and
Carol's service on Christmas Eve, which I

388
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:45,880
think is awesome quite frankly, and
I'm not going to stop, you know,

389
00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:48,960
I'm not telling anybody stop doing that. But it's quite funny to realize

390
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:52,799
that there are lots of medieval bishops, you know in France and England and

391
00:27:52,880 --> 00:27:56,759
other places writing against the practice of
caroling. Well, why are they writing

392
00:27:56,759 --> 00:28:00,720
against the practice of carolyn? Because
caroling is uh, it's a it's a

393
00:28:00,759 --> 00:28:04,279
sort of a it's a carnival practice. Right. You're going around from house

394
00:28:04,319 --> 00:28:07,279
to house, and you're usually going
with a keg or like a large bowl

395
00:28:07,279 --> 00:28:11,359
of very alcoholic punch, and you
come up to the door of the place

396
00:28:11,440 --> 00:28:15,480
and you sing, and then you
offer the people at the house, you

397
00:28:15,519 --> 00:28:18,680
offer them a drink in exchange for
like a gift of some kind. And

398
00:28:18,000 --> 00:28:22,839
yeah, this is caroling, and
which, by the way, sounds like

399
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:27,319
a great time. We try to
do caroling every year st around our neighborhood.

400
00:28:27,519 --> 00:28:32,720
And and but I've never like been
like, hab a sit from the

401
00:28:32,759 --> 00:28:36,319
flask as well, neighbor light.
Maybe I need to bring that in,

402
00:28:36,359 --> 00:28:40,319
But no to make you more popular, yeah yeah, yeah, or less

403
00:28:40,319 --> 00:28:44,400
popular, depending on English neighbor ending
on which yeah. Yeah. But anyway,

404
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:47,920
my point is that that that all
of that sounds awesome, okay,

405
00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:51,680
but this actually helps explain the kind
of the character of Christmas carols. Like

406
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:56,039
if you go back and look at
some really old medieval Christmas carols, especially

407
00:28:56,119 --> 00:29:00,640
like medieval English carols, which is
most of us know. Sometimes they're uh

408
00:29:00,039 --> 00:29:03,759
there, let's let's put it this
way. They're not usually theologically explicit.

409
00:29:04,160 --> 00:29:08,359
Yeah, there a lot of times
they'll have be something like I saw three

410
00:29:08,400 --> 00:29:11,799
ships on Christmas Day or something like
this, and there's a lot of metaphor,

411
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:15,319
and it's the way you think of
it as a sort of a lyrical

412
00:29:15,400 --> 00:29:19,039
veil over the mystery. Yeah,
and why is the mystery veiled in this

413
00:29:19,079 --> 00:29:23,680
way? Well, it's because it's
because we're not in church, right,

414
00:29:23,759 --> 00:29:27,920
and we're going around town and we're
slightly drunk at this point. And also

415
00:29:29,079 --> 00:29:32,440
some of the things that they sang
along with Christmas carols in the same setting,

416
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:40,920
we're drinking songs. Yeah, how
much trouble? How much trouble am

417
00:29:40,960 --> 00:29:45,119
I allowed to get into trouble?
Is okay? So I'll just say that

418
00:29:45,200 --> 00:29:48,799
there is a h there's a collection, like a fifteenth century manuscript that collects

419
00:29:48,799 --> 00:29:53,359
a bunch of Christmas carols and including
one of my favorite medieval carols, which

420
00:29:53,400 --> 00:29:57,240
is called Adam Leigh bound In.
We'll talk about that in a second.

421
00:29:59,519 --> 00:30:07,079
But it all also has like songs
about somebody's male member, the lyrics at

422
00:30:07,079 --> 00:30:11,079
which are are quite hilarious actually,
And and the thing you have to understand

423
00:30:11,079 --> 00:30:14,559
is they're going from house to house
and you're getting songs about like the Fall

424
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:18,480
and Original Sin and baby Juice is
a Manger and then also here's here's a

425
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:22,880
funny you know, body humor,
like yeah, like yeah, here's a

426
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:26,920
dirty sung right that. That's that's
how carol's were used. That's what caroling

427
00:30:26,039 --> 00:30:30,240
is. This is this is the
uh, those are the only two registers

428
00:30:30,240 --> 00:30:34,640
anybody has in the Middle Ages.
You're either like pousplating the mystery or it's

429
00:30:36,480 --> 00:30:38,799
body humor, and those are the
two, like there's nothing in between.

430
00:30:40,319 --> 00:30:42,160
When would they carol? Like when
would date? What days? Do you

431
00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:45,480
know? Well, so, the
the thing that the church really try to

432
00:30:45,559 --> 00:30:49,640
enforce is caroling doesn't start until Christmas
night, okay, yeah, Christmas night

433
00:30:51,039 --> 00:30:55,400
and then and then you you go
you go around caroling after that. Of

434
00:30:55,400 --> 00:31:00,240
course, eventually what happens is that
the distinct which you would Advent and Christmas

435
00:31:00,279 --> 00:31:03,920
Tide gets kind of lost, and
that's how we get the situation that we

436
00:31:03,960 --> 00:31:07,480
have today. But that doesn't really
happen it'stil the nineteenth century. Yeah,

437
00:31:07,519 --> 00:31:11,559
and then of course this culminates.
Eventually Carrol's become a nostalgia thing. At

438
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:15,359
least the ones that aren't about yeah, yeah, forget it, but I

439
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:18,960
don't know them now, they will
become the ones you hear at them.

440
00:31:18,559 --> 00:31:21,880
And by the way, there were
carols I'll just say, there were carols

441
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:26,319
for other holidays too. Yeah,
some very famous, very famous, like

442
00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:34,160
ash Wednesday carols, Good Friday carols, even one carol for the Circumcision of

443
00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:37,160
the Lord that I that I managed
to find. So there were, like

444
00:31:37,279 --> 00:31:41,880
historically, there were other carols as
well, but Christmas was like the main

445
00:31:41,920 --> 00:31:44,880
time you went caroling. And it
has to do with this, It has

446
00:31:44,920 --> 00:31:47,799
to do with this, the winter
of it all. Basically, right,

447
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:49,119
you need to drink It's like,
yeah, you need to drink old and

448
00:31:49,160 --> 00:31:56,319
it's dark. Yeah yeah. So
we also get things like the Christmas boar.

449
00:31:56,519 --> 00:32:00,599
There's actually a famous carol about this, the boars headed Christmas, which

450
00:32:00,640 --> 00:32:05,079
is which I really love the use
of, especially in Western Europe. The

451
00:32:05,160 --> 00:32:10,599
use of evergreenery, you know,
like garland holly, evergreens, you know,

452
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:13,759
fir trees, things like this.
The use of this to sort of

453
00:32:13,799 --> 00:32:16,640
like uh, sparse up the inside
of the house, right with like lice

454
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:22,039
and evergreen, which is if there's
any aesthetic which which is like identifiably Christmas,

455
00:32:22,079 --> 00:32:24,000
it would be lots of lights and
just evergreen things everywhere, right,

456
00:32:24,759 --> 00:32:29,000
and again when most of the world
is dead except for these particular plants.

457
00:32:29,400 --> 00:32:31,160
Yeah, right, that it's very
easy to see why why that would be

458
00:32:31,200 --> 00:32:36,119
done. And it also winter berries, Like the idea of a winterberry is

459
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:40,279
really bortant with Christmas because it is
light or that seed that's being preserved and

460
00:32:40,319 --> 00:32:45,599
you can still identified even though everything
else is dead. Yeah, now that's

461
00:32:45,799 --> 00:32:50,119
u that's a beautiful way to say
that. And even things like missiletoe,

462
00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:53,039
which we we know like as modern
people we know it to be a parasitic

463
00:32:53,079 --> 00:32:59,000
fun guy, right, but fungus. But but for medieval people, the

464
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:02,519
missletoe had all these other connotations,
right, you know the but also like

465
00:33:02,559 --> 00:33:07,960
it's a little poisonous, so it's
yeah, but it's it's it's one of

466
00:33:07,960 --> 00:33:10,400
those interesting things. Go look at
the way that mistletoe has used in medieval

467
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:16,319
symbolism. That's a subtle video,
I think. But so you have you

468
00:33:16,359 --> 00:33:22,119
have all those stuff that comes in
another very important element that should not be

469
00:33:22,160 --> 00:33:27,920
overlooked is the feasting of the poor. So this is a really important part

470
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:31,759
of actually any Christian celebration. If
you if you want to be trad and

471
00:33:31,799 --> 00:33:36,960
you want to go celebrate holidays in
traditional ways, if you're not buying a

472
00:33:37,039 --> 00:33:39,519
mule for somebody else, right,
or or you know, get a case

473
00:33:39,519 --> 00:33:42,880
of beer for the guy in the
corner or something, you know, like

474
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:45,920
if you're not if you are not
actually feasting the poor in some way,

475
00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:51,079
then you are actually traditional celebrating traditionally. And so the way that it worked

476
00:33:51,079 --> 00:33:52,839
in for instance, in Midie,
England, is that there were certain days

477
00:33:52,839 --> 00:33:57,839
of the year Easter, Saint John's
Night, which is the summer solstice,

478
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:00,640
and then and Christmas at a specifically
other days as well, but those three

479
00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:06,319
days specifically when it was expected that
the well to do members of the villager

480
00:34:06,359 --> 00:34:08,639
of the town would put out a
feast for all of the poor people,

481
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:12,480
right. And it's sort of like
come and get as much as you want

482
00:34:12,519 --> 00:34:15,199
of all the richest foods, right. And this is a really important part

483
00:34:15,239 --> 00:34:19,400
of the celebration as well. And
a lot of times when we talk we

484
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:22,199
think about like the social and version
aspect of some of these holidays like the

485
00:34:22,199 --> 00:34:27,320
Boy Bishop Feast or the Feast of
the ass on January fourteenth. Right.

486
00:34:27,360 --> 00:34:31,719
Obviously there they have a connotation of
like misrule and things like this, and

487
00:34:32,119 --> 00:34:38,400
those aspects were always always concerned for
religious leaders, especially those of the more

488
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:45,760
sort of uptight variety. But also
a part of the whole idea of inversion

489
00:34:45,840 --> 00:34:50,000
is that poor people get to eat
what the rich people have, and that's

490
00:34:50,039 --> 00:34:54,719
actually a really important dynamic within Christianity
and a really important dynamic within the traditional

491
00:34:54,760 --> 00:34:59,639
observance of these feasts. Yeah,
and that's still like today, we still

492
00:34:59,679 --> 00:35:04,039
have of you know, the kind
of Christmas uh you know what you say

493
00:35:04,079 --> 00:35:07,119
it in English, but you know, like to gather around food for Christmas

494
00:35:07,159 --> 00:35:12,079
like you go to for for people
and making boxes for families that struggle and

495
00:35:12,079 --> 00:35:15,800
stuff like. That's definitely still even
in a secular world. It's I feel,

496
00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:20,400
I think every truth that I've ever
gone to as a member, both

497
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:23,519
as a Protestant now is worth an
Execrition has done that for Christmas, and

498
00:35:24,000 --> 00:35:27,679
even the grocery stores get in on
it. You know. It was like

499
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:30,960
here's a bunch of conveniently packed bags
of food. You can just buy one

500
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:35,880
and then we'll donate it to the
shelter and things like that. So you

501
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:38,360
know, Uh, the rule about
charity, there are two rules about charity.

502
00:35:38,599 --> 00:35:42,559
Uh, since nobody asked. There
are two rules about charity. One

503
00:35:42,599 --> 00:35:45,639
is that the the the less Uh, the closer the proximity, the better.

504
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:51,760
Right. The more times my money
changes hands, I'm not even talking

505
00:35:51,840 --> 00:35:54,280
about like where is that money actually
going? Because this doesn't actually seem to

506
00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:58,000
be a question that we're supposed to
ask as Christians. I mean, be

507
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:00,000
a little discerning about the charities you
donate to. But Christ, you know,

508
00:36:00,079 --> 00:36:02,599
Christ says to give to every man
that asks to do right, so

509
00:36:04,159 --> 00:36:07,800
not but what is he going to
do with it later? But but anyway,

510
00:36:07,719 --> 00:36:12,679
but the more the more times that
that gift changes hands, right,

511
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:15,199
basically, the farther away I have
to be from my neighbor to give to

512
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:19,599
him, right, let's say,
like the less self iffic it is,

513
00:36:19,679 --> 00:36:22,599
Right, it has a different effect
on your soul if you are personally,

514
00:36:22,239 --> 00:36:24,840
you know, giving something to somebody, You're looking somebody in the eye,

515
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:28,880
you're seeing them as a human being. Right, It's that's a very different

516
00:36:28,920 --> 00:36:31,800
thing than I just I just gave
some money to a to a charity online.

517
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:36,840
And now I'm covered. And I'm
not saying don't give money to charities

518
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:38,320
online, like do what you can't
do, what do what you can do,

519
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:45,000
but but but maybe don't don't underestimate
the importance of And this is just

520
00:36:45,039 --> 00:36:50,559
the real difference, you could say, like between religious charity and something like

521
00:36:50,599 --> 00:36:54,679
government welfare, is that there is
a sort of a depersonalization that goes on,

522
00:36:55,519 --> 00:36:59,920
right, that makes it you know, never mind with the effect my

523
00:37:00,079 --> 00:37:02,400
the other person who's on the receiving
gun, right, but for the person

524
00:37:04,679 --> 00:37:09,119
you know, Saint John christem lots
of lots of famous homilies against you know,

525
00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:12,800
wealth. Uh, there there are
no warnings to the poor in the

526
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:16,119
Bible, you know. And but
one of the things that he she you

527
00:37:16,159 --> 00:37:19,239
know, to paraphrase, you know, I said, you know, what

528
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:22,840
are you saving up for? Hell? You know kind of you know that

529
00:37:22,920 --> 00:37:24,639
kind of an idea. But yeah, but he talks a lot about this

530
00:37:24,800 --> 00:37:28,480
and that says, you know,
the poor man is there for your salvation,

531
00:37:28,840 --> 00:37:30,880
right, you know, so you
can't neglect him, right. So

532
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:34,559
this is the really important part of
the celebration of this kind of feast.

533
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:38,960
And uh, it's also a very
important part of understanding the symbolism of Christmas,

534
00:37:39,000 --> 00:37:43,960
right, the highest thing becoming the
lowest thing. Right, that inversion,

535
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:47,119
uh, which is which is at
the heart of charitable giving works of

536
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:52,199
mercy, but is also at the
heart of the parts of the feast that

537
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:59,360
make certain people it chy. Right, the the the inversion, the like

538
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:04,079
the social and versions and the and
the revelry and things like this, that

539
00:38:04,679 --> 00:38:07,679
all of that is actually part of
that of the symbolism of the highest thing

540
00:38:07,719 --> 00:38:14,960
becoming low. So uh. And
then of course you know this inversion can

541
00:38:15,079 --> 00:38:20,480
take darker aspects, right, drunkenness, gambling, et cetera. That's always

542
00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:22,480
been a problem people, and and
and you know, like, uh,

543
00:38:23,119 --> 00:38:28,760
people in charge have always tried to
sort of it. Yeah, sure,

544
00:38:28,800 --> 00:38:30,159
right, always they got to figure
out how to manage it, right.

545
00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:36,280
So, and I just want to
reiterate a lot of the things that we're

546
00:38:36,280 --> 00:38:37,679
talking about here. You know,
you could go back and look at like

547
00:38:37,719 --> 00:38:42,679
Saturnalia as this time of inversion or
or something like that. A lot of

548
00:38:42,679 --> 00:38:45,079
things we're talking about here can just
write, I think should be rightly understood

549
00:38:45,079 --> 00:38:51,400
as integrations of pagan soulsice celebrations,
and that should be fine right, if

550
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:53,800
we understand the way that Christianity works, the way that Christ works, the

551
00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:58,079
significance that is coming into the world
and the deeper winter, they should not

552
00:38:58,079 --> 00:39:00,159
actually present us with the difficulty.
Yeah, I mean, I mean think

553
00:39:00,199 --> 00:39:05,679
about it like it's weird. Because
also think about in the Middle Ages,

554
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:08,280
the bishop complaining that, you know, people in the town got too drunk,

555
00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:13,320
instead of mentioning how they are massive
orgies, you know, like right,

556
00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:15,519
yeah, a kid like the saturnay. Everything's relative, That's right,

557
00:39:15,599 --> 00:39:22,000
everything's relative. So you can actually
see how Christianity transforms these types of feasts

558
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:27,079
to like to be able to give
some room for a bit of messiness,

559
00:39:27,119 --> 00:39:30,360
to like point it but then pointed
towards towards a better path. You could

560
00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:36,079
say, Yeah, I'm gonna talk
a lot about Charles Taylor in the Second

561
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:38,719
is a secular age, but he
talks about these kinds of carnival as being

562
00:39:38,840 --> 00:39:44,079
like the idea of like if you
have wine and a wine like wine aging

563
00:39:44,079 --> 00:39:46,480
and old wine skin and you don't
like unstop it every once in a while,

564
00:39:46,559 --> 00:39:50,519
eventually it's gonna explode. Right,
The gas is just gonna build up

565
00:39:50,519 --> 00:39:52,480
and it's gonna explode. It's the
same kind of a thing here, Like

566
00:39:52,519 --> 00:39:57,559
you do have to have a little
bit like like you shouldn't get drunk,

567
00:39:57,599 --> 00:40:00,199
but then also there are times when
people need to get drunk. Right,

568
00:40:00,199 --> 00:40:02,280
those are like the two weird.
Uh, that's the weird dichotomy that you

569
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:06,639
find even in scripture. Even in
scripture you find this, right, you

570
00:40:06,679 --> 00:40:09,320
know that there are in Leviticus,
right, you know, there's a whole

571
00:40:09,519 --> 00:40:14,440
like and if you can't go to
the Jerusalem for this particular feast, then

572
00:40:14,519 --> 00:40:16,360
take the money that you would have
spent on the trip and throw a big

573
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:21,360
party for your friends at eat and
be merry and get drunk before the Lord,

574
00:40:21,519 --> 00:40:23,320
right, you know. And so
so it's it's it's a weird it's

575
00:40:23,320 --> 00:40:28,000
a weird plane of a thing.
And I think I think that the the

576
00:40:28,079 --> 00:40:31,800
balance the church has traditionally struck is
that you always have you always have people

577
00:40:31,840 --> 00:40:35,920
saying knock it off, you guys, and you always have people sort of

578
00:40:36,000 --> 00:40:39,119
doing it anyway that seems to like
that seems to like hit like a good

579
00:40:39,199 --> 00:40:43,719
kind of flexibility. And this is
really actually with this point is such a

580
00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:47,079
great point that you're making. And
it's one that that it's that people don't

581
00:40:47,159 --> 00:40:53,880
understand how traditional societies work because we
tend to or understand authority as always as

582
00:40:54,039 --> 00:40:59,599
absolute authority that has absolute reach.
And so when we know that, like

583
00:40:59,800 --> 00:41:01,920
you can't cross a red light,
we know that if you cross a red

584
00:41:02,039 --> 00:41:06,199
light, then you'll get a ticket. You know, they'll they'llly take a

585
00:41:06,239 --> 00:41:08,400
picture of your license plate and then
you'll get a ticket by the mail or

586
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:13,239
whatever. And so. But in
the traditional world, like you said,

587
00:41:13,280 --> 00:41:16,000
it's actually a it's actually a dance, right, there's a dance, like

588
00:41:16,039 --> 00:41:21,599
you said, between different factions that
create this kind of balance and move that

589
00:41:21,639 --> 00:41:23,880
doesn't always remain the same. It
kind of moves sometimes. Maybe it'll be

590
00:41:24,119 --> 00:41:28,480
moments where it's a bit more puritanical, sometimes we'll be a little more permissive,

591
00:41:28,519 --> 00:41:30,480
and then it'll kind of slide back
and forth between that. But that's

592
00:41:30,519 --> 00:41:37,440
the dance between exactly that the balance
is saying yeah, knock it off,

593
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:39,880
but then doing it to some extent. Anyways. Yeah, the kind of

594
00:41:39,880 --> 00:41:45,000
people you always want to be careful
of are the either like the Puritans or

595
00:41:45,039 --> 00:41:47,280
like the total hedonists. Right,
that's right. Either one of those extremes

596
00:41:47,400 --> 00:41:51,760
is a really dangerous person. It's
a dangerous person to having charge of your

597
00:41:51,840 --> 00:41:53,639
church. It's a dangerous person to
have in your life. It's a dangerous

598
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:58,519
kind of a person to be.
That's right. Well, there was a

599
00:41:58,960 --> 00:42:00,000
Oh, I just had a very
fun thought and then I lost it.

600
00:42:00,039 --> 00:42:05,599
But maybe I'll come back to me. But yeah, I think this element

601
00:42:05,679 --> 00:42:09,079
up the way that traditional societies worked
is really important. And this is the

602
00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:16,360
this is kind of like the danger
of go, oh, there's a thought,

603
00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:20,119
all right, So this is the
danger of going and like just reading

604
00:42:20,119 --> 00:42:22,559
a whole bunch of canon law and
then looking around at the people in your

605
00:42:22,599 --> 00:42:27,639
parish or your priests. Has nobody's
doing with there? What a bunch of

606
00:42:27,719 --> 00:42:30,599
terrible hypocritess. None of them are
doing it was there because that's not it's

607
00:42:30,639 --> 00:42:34,360
not really how that works, right. And but the thing that I wanted

608
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:38,400
to point out is that when we
talk about hierarchy, right, the bishops

609
00:42:38,440 --> 00:42:43,920
that the Church has canonized, that
we set up as being this is the

610
00:42:44,000 --> 00:42:46,880
kind of person that you should be
because they're like Christ, so you should

611
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:51,079
be like them. If you go
and look at the lives of the bishops

612
00:42:51,079 --> 00:42:54,360
the church is canonized. One of
the things that's basically universal among them is

613
00:42:54,400 --> 00:42:58,440
their care for the poor, right
that they were out setting out of peace,

614
00:42:59,639 --> 00:43:05,320
out of the personal treasury, not
just for the poor on certain feast

615
00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:07,519
days of the year, but every
single day. Right. So they're the

616
00:43:07,519 --> 00:43:13,480
people who best embody the highest thing, you know, in this case the

617
00:43:13,519 --> 00:43:17,239
bishop, right, the highest thing
becoming the lowest right and their ability to

618
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:22,719
kind of do that, and and
so it's it's this sort of it's this

619
00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:27,119
sort of interesting. I mean,
the other big secret that that is kind

620
00:43:27,159 --> 00:43:34,320
of offensive to modern Christianity is that
is that uh I said, I said

621
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:37,480
a minute ago, like there are
no warnings to the poor in the scriptures.

622
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:39,960
And and if you look at the
way that this has been that this

623
00:43:40,000 --> 00:43:46,079
has been uh kind of uh,
the rigidity and the flexibility. We're just

624
00:43:46,079 --> 00:43:49,880
talking about the way that's been enforced. It is it's the idea that the

625
00:43:49,920 --> 00:43:52,519
poor man is the man who needs
the party and maybe he needs to get

626
00:43:52,519 --> 00:43:55,320
a little drug, right and then
but it's actually it's you know, it's

627
00:43:55,320 --> 00:43:59,440
the it's the well to do person, you know, feasting with all his

628
00:43:59,519 --> 00:44:02,679
friends. He the person who needs
to be who needs to be sober and

629
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:07,639
celebrate more soberly. Right, And
what are the weird things that happens in

630
00:44:07,599 --> 00:44:12,920
this is this is what Taylor calls
like multiple multiple speed Christianity, right,

631
00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:16,039
and what are the weird things that
happens, especially with Puritanism is his idea

632
00:44:16,039 --> 00:44:20,199
that's no, there's actually only one
speed, and we have to hold the

633
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:23,639
poor person to the same standard that
we hold the rich man. And that

634
00:44:23,840 --> 00:44:30,480
sounds really egalitarian now, but it's
not. Actually, that's not actually how

635
00:44:30,559 --> 00:44:36,880
traditional societies work. So okay,
So kind of one of the things I

636
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:39,599
want to point out that is maybe
a little different in the medieval celebration of

637
00:44:39,679 --> 00:44:45,119
Christmas, both in the East and
the West, is the focus, especially

638
00:44:45,119 --> 00:44:52,199
on Christmas Eve, in specific,
the focus on Christmas Eve on the retelling

639
00:44:52,199 --> 00:44:54,159
of the story of Adam and Eve. So if you become a church on

640
00:44:54,239 --> 00:45:01,880
Christmas Eve in the Orthodox Church,
you'll hear the reading of the opening narrative

641
00:45:01,880 --> 00:45:05,199
of Genesis, the creation of a
world in the follow man, right,

642
00:45:05,400 --> 00:45:07,639
that's the that's that's the that's the
that's the Old Testament readings for Christmas Eve.

643
00:45:10,159 --> 00:45:15,320
If and this is where the sort
of uh, there there is some

644
00:45:15,440 --> 00:45:17,639
kind of different origins, and really
they're probably all true to a certain extent,

645
00:45:17,679 --> 00:45:22,360
but one of the main origins of
the Christmas tree comes from the Paradise

646
00:45:22,400 --> 00:45:24,440
tree, which would be set up
on Christmas Eve, which is actually the

647
00:45:24,480 --> 00:45:29,360
day you're supposed to put up your
Christmas tree, not the day after American

648
00:45:29,360 --> 00:45:34,199
Thanksgiving. Everybody, we sort of
compromise and usually do it on Saint Nicholas

649
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:37,320
Day, okay in my family,
but which is in a couple of days

650
00:45:37,559 --> 00:45:40,880
from when we're recording this. But
but anyway, but but Christmas Eve traditional

651
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:45,480
day when the tree goes up,
and uh and and because the idea is

652
00:45:45,519 --> 00:45:47,599
it's the tree of paradise, it
is the tree of life, the tree

653
00:45:47,599 --> 00:45:52,000
of paradise, and it was there
the Paradise tree tradition both in East and

654
00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:54,519
West. You said on the well, the Paradise tree not so much.

655
00:45:54,519 --> 00:45:59,119
But what I'm saying is the focus
that that's really a Western European thing.

656
00:45:59,639 --> 00:46:05,079
But the I'm just saying, the
focus on the focus on Adam and Eve

657
00:46:05,199 --> 00:46:07,880
on Christmas Eve is is the thing
of both the East and the West,

658
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:12,480
and it's something that it's weird.
We kept the Paradise tree right and actually

659
00:46:12,480 --> 00:46:15,519
became totally ubiquitous in the Western celebration
of Christmas and in the East too,

660
00:46:15,559 --> 00:46:20,159
everyone does Christmas trees. Now this
is great. I'm super pro Christmas tree.

661
00:46:20,239 --> 00:46:22,280
So like, go cut down a
per tree, put it in your

662
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:29,880
living room. God will be pleased, like do it. But but but

663
00:46:29,880 --> 00:46:32,679
but it's it's interesting because the liturgical
focus, as far as I know,

664
00:46:32,719 --> 00:46:36,880
and I could be wrong about this, but the liturgical focus in the West

665
00:46:36,920 --> 00:46:39,960
on on Genesis on Christmas Eve has
kind of been lost. But it was

666
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:46,000
really cool. In the Middle Ages, they would have passion plays about Adam

667
00:46:46,039 --> 00:46:49,480
and youth. And this is the
main this is the main. Let me

668
00:46:49,480 --> 00:46:52,559
put it this way. This is
the main time of year when somebody in

669
00:46:52,599 --> 00:46:55,360
like medieval England would have interacted with
the Genesis story, not just like not

670
00:46:55,480 --> 00:46:59,320
just like seeing a picture of it
or like heard it read or something like

671
00:46:59,360 --> 00:47:00,880
that. But the main time of
year that they would have actually interacted with

672
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:05,280
it in an embodied way would have
been on Christmas Eve. So they would

673
00:47:05,519 --> 00:47:08,360
they would have like plays. Yeah, and a passion play for people don't

674
00:47:08,360 --> 00:47:12,760
know, is like a para liturtical
thing. It's not something that happens in

675
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:15,119
the church, but it's it's it's
the origin by the way of like the

676
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:20,719
like the Easter pageant or the Christmas
pageant that maybe you did. I did

677
00:47:21,039 --> 00:47:23,559
lots of these growing up, as
you know, as an evangelical. Yeah,

678
00:47:23,599 --> 00:47:29,039
and they're really cool memories. But
but that has its basis in the

679
00:47:29,039 --> 00:47:31,119
passion play. But the passion play
was something that it's not something that they

680
00:47:31,159 --> 00:47:34,800
did in the church. It's something
that they did in like the village square

681
00:47:35,079 --> 00:47:38,239
yea. And they had they had
them for obviously the name passion play,

682
00:47:38,519 --> 00:47:44,400
uh uh, you know implies passion
tide. But they had them for but

683
00:47:44,440 --> 00:47:46,119
they had them for all the various
piece ds of the year. In fact,

684
00:47:46,599 --> 00:47:51,800
the passion plays for the for Candle
Miss Groundhog Day we talked about that

685
00:47:51,920 --> 00:47:55,159
last year were really really cool.
They had, you know, like a

686
00:47:55,199 --> 00:48:00,079
woman from the village that they are
selected to play the Virgin Mary, and

687
00:48:00,079 --> 00:48:02,360
she would be carrying a baby and
the whole city would village would possess with

688
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:06,079
her up to the door of the
church and she'd present the babies to the

689
00:48:06,079 --> 00:48:07,760
priests and all this stuff like it
was you know, and so again these

690
00:48:07,760 --> 00:48:15,360
are sort of like para liturgical ways
to participate in the peace. Okay.

691
00:48:15,440 --> 00:48:19,920
So and then also just one thing
to mention is that because Christmas is a

692
00:48:20,039 --> 00:48:22,360
day to go to church first and
foremost is all these other things, but

693
00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:25,199
the thing that makes it a holy
day is the fact that you're having the

694
00:48:25,239 --> 00:48:30,360
mass, that's the mass, increased
mass, right, So it was considered

695
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:34,079
to be a very important day.
So there are a lot of famous kings

696
00:48:34,639 --> 00:48:37,519
and emperors, including Charlemagne, who
were ordayed on Christmas Day. Right.

697
00:48:37,519 --> 00:48:42,079
It was just considered to be like
the most appropriate day for this kind of

698
00:48:42,119 --> 00:48:49,239
an action. I said, coronation, ordination, right, But coronation is

699
00:48:49,599 --> 00:48:52,800
that is a holy order, that's
a sacrament of the Church. So all

700
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:55,639
right, so let me talk a
little bit real quick about Christmas in the

701
00:48:55,679 --> 00:49:01,199
early modern period. So what's really
interesting is that the Reformation period gives birth

702
00:49:01,239 --> 00:49:06,760
to both Christmas as we basically as
we celebrate it now in the Western hemisphere,

703
00:49:07,159 --> 00:49:09,719
but also to the general anti Christmas
movement. Right, So like both

704
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:13,920
of those things come out of the
Reformation. So on the one hand,

705
00:49:14,000 --> 00:49:17,599
you have, for instance, Lutheranism, Martin Luther, big fan of Christmas

706
00:49:19,840 --> 00:49:24,440
and which I take as a redeeming
quality, and he he sort of engineered

707
00:49:24,480 --> 00:49:29,519
the massive production of Christmas hymns and
carols, and you can always tell a

708
00:49:29,679 --> 00:49:35,719
Lutheran carol from a medieval Christian medieval
English carol, because the medieval English carols

709
00:49:35,719 --> 00:49:39,159
are like really weird and have like
a lot of symbolism and things like this,

710
00:49:39,239 --> 00:49:45,239
and the Lutheran carols, because they're
written as theologically explicit songs, are

711
00:49:45,559 --> 00:49:50,519
like very like obviously theologically explicit,
and so it is, whereas whereas like

712
00:49:50,599 --> 00:49:53,760
the older medieval carols are kind of
more riddling in nature. But this is

713
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:59,119
when Christmas tree has really become a
big thing, probably related to that Paradise

714
00:49:59,159 --> 00:50:04,280
treem like we talked about, and
also just the general very ancient practice in

715
00:50:04,280 --> 00:50:07,519
that part of the world bringing greenery
into the house as part of the winter.

716
00:50:07,199 --> 00:50:12,400
Are there are there any of the
medieval hymns that are still active now?

717
00:50:13,440 --> 00:50:16,480
Yes, there are. I've actually
kind of put together a playlist of

718
00:50:16,519 --> 00:50:21,199
some of them, of course,
all the ones that we so are you

719
00:50:21,239 --> 00:50:23,320
asking about hymns or carols? Because
again that's it carols, like, yeah,

720
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:30,280
yeah, yes, there are you. Probably the oldest one that people

721
00:50:30,360 --> 00:50:35,559
know well is Good King Wenceslaus,
which is about the which is about the

722
00:50:35,599 --> 00:50:38,840
practice, by the way feeding the
poor at Christmas, right, and one

723
00:50:38,840 --> 00:50:43,800
of my favorite songs actually, but
there's uh which is weird because it's not

724
00:50:43,840 --> 00:50:47,039
like yet, It's like it doesn't
talk about Christmas right directly in the way

725
00:50:47,079 --> 00:50:51,079
that like Holy Night does. Let's
say, yes, yeah, well it's

726
00:50:51,079 --> 00:50:53,440
on the Feast of Stephen, which
people used to know is the second day

727
00:50:53,440 --> 00:50:58,599
of Christmas. But yeah, yeah, people used to know that better.

728
00:50:58,719 --> 00:51:02,440
But but it's a very old carol
I met. As far as other ones

729
00:51:02,440 --> 00:51:07,280
that are like still in popular vernacular, I have a bunch of ones that

730
00:51:07,320 --> 00:51:13,239
I like a whole lot that are
not necessarily well known anymore. But abby

731
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:16,079
there, let me think about this. Maybe I'll try to post some on

732
00:51:16,079 --> 00:51:20,880
the Facebook group. I put together
a kind of like a pre modern advent

733
00:51:21,039 --> 00:51:23,119
playlist and just try to find like
all the carols and games that I could

734
00:51:23,119 --> 00:51:27,320
find that had been written before a
certain date. And I've done about thirty

735
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:30,039
or forty things on that list,
and so maybe i'll maybe I'll share that

736
00:51:30,079 --> 00:51:34,239
with with everybody again. But some
of them are like well known. Some

737
00:51:34,280 --> 00:51:37,199
of them are you know obviously all
the all the Orthodox hymns for the feast

738
00:51:37,239 --> 00:51:39,679
are all, you know, written
in like the eighth century, so you

739
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:45,960
know that's all squarely pre modern.
But but those aren't carols, right,

740
00:51:47,440 --> 00:51:52,480
Okay, So Lutheranism produces just a
massive number of Christmas hymns and carols.

741
00:51:53,360 --> 00:52:00,840
Christmas trees really become a big thing. Actually, luther was big on Christmas

742
00:52:00,880 --> 00:52:05,760
trees, not so much on the
krash right, the Nativity scene. And

743
00:52:05,880 --> 00:52:08,480
so what's really funny is eventually,
this is the thing about Christmas, the

744
00:52:08,519 --> 00:52:14,400
stickiness that we've been talking about.
People don't get rid of Christmas traditions,

745
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:17,199
they just add new ones. And
so so some people were like, no,

746
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:20,760
you should do a tree, not
a craze, and so everybody's like,

747
00:52:20,760 --> 00:52:22,239
great, we'll do both. In
fact, we'll do a craze under

748
00:52:22,239 --> 00:52:24,559
the Christmas tree. I see how
you like that? You know? Yeah,

749
00:52:25,440 --> 00:52:29,760
makes so much sense symbolically to have, right, right, it does

750
00:52:30,000 --> 00:52:34,199
any of Evan and angels of lights, you know. And then at the

751
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:37,360
lot you have the you put an
angel or a star at the top.

752
00:52:37,400 --> 00:52:40,800
Yeah, right, the same thing. Yeah. I love. This is

753
00:52:40,800 --> 00:52:45,519
why I love Christmas so much.
And I think it was like my one

754
00:52:45,519 --> 00:52:52,320
of my primary early like symbolic my
early symbolic education really was just paying attention

755
00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:57,679
to Christmas customs and things. Like
I was talking about earlier, because everything

756
00:52:57,719 --> 00:53:02,920
about Christmas is so deeply symbolically intuitive, it's just really beautiful. So and

757
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:06,840
a lot of the trappings that we
think of as kind of defining the American

758
00:53:06,920 --> 00:53:13,719
Christmas now were basically brought to North
America by the Moravians, by the Pennsylvania

759
00:53:13,800 --> 00:53:16,679
Dutch, and by these these other
groups. And so there were several Continental

760
00:53:16,719 --> 00:53:22,159
Reform churches, such as the Death
Reformed, which did continue to celebrate Christmas.

761
00:53:22,480 --> 00:53:28,440
They celebrated as one of the five
evangelical feasts, which were Christmas,

762
00:53:28,480 --> 00:53:31,159
Good, Priorday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. And I had never

763
00:53:31,199 --> 00:53:36,000
understood, maybe somebody out there was
to enlighten me, pastor Paul or somebody

764
00:53:36,000 --> 00:53:38,840
else, why those are the evangelical
beasts and not any of the other things

765
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:43,800
in the Gospels that are also Christian
feasts, like you know, the native

766
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:46,000
evangelical. Usually when we say something
is evangelical and historical sense, we've been

767
00:53:46,079 --> 00:53:50,559
it's mentioned in the Gospels, right, But so is Transfiguration and Nunciation,

768
00:53:50,599 --> 00:53:54,119
et cetera. So I don't know
why, well, a five evangelical feast,

769
00:53:54,159 --> 00:53:58,280
at least back then for the Dat
Reformed, where I'm not saying of

770
00:53:58,280 --> 00:54:01,880
anything about current practice. But where
Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension,

771
00:54:01,920 --> 00:54:06,679
and Pentecost. I think it's because
Easter Ascension and Pentecosts, right,

772
00:54:06,679 --> 00:54:08,400
that's all kind of one clusters.
Is the coherence. You know how many

773
00:54:08,480 --> 00:54:10,840
days you can get it from scripture
pretty much? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

774
00:54:10,920 --> 00:54:14,559
yeah yeah, that might be what
it is. I think is because

775
00:54:14,599 --> 00:54:17,599
the other days you can't get from
scripture to celebrate the other ones. And

776
00:54:17,920 --> 00:54:25,079
this is basically where we get the
general idea in American Christianity. And here

777
00:54:25,079 --> 00:54:30,400
I'm gonna speak very broadly of kind
of like the Christmas and Easter rhythm,

778
00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:32,880
if you know what I'm talking about, Like this idea by which you have

779
00:54:32,960 --> 00:54:37,159
Christmas and that's a big deal on
you Easter which is usually a really big

780
00:54:37,199 --> 00:54:42,400
deal. And but there's really nothing
else of particular spiritual significance between the two

781
00:54:42,840 --> 00:54:45,079
other than, of course, you're
just your Sunday observance, your Lord save

782
00:54:45,159 --> 00:54:52,079
servants rights, which is how I
grew up. Right. Where we really

783
00:54:52,079 --> 00:54:57,480
get into trouble though, Christmas wise, is when we get into the Puritans,

784
00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:00,719
right, And so here I have
to say some things that uh,

785
00:55:01,199 --> 00:55:05,719
well they're I'm just gonna read what
they said, like, it's not fun.

786
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:07,400
Uh, these were not fun people. I don't know how to say

787
00:55:07,400 --> 00:55:12,440
it here. Tins are not fun, not fun people. You can quote

788
00:55:12,440 --> 00:55:15,079
man, but I think they would
have said they were not fun. I

789
00:55:15,079 --> 00:55:22,119
think it's okay. So the the
Puritanical movement, by by this I mean

790
00:55:22,159 --> 00:55:28,440
English Puritans, biggest sacs of of
English Christians, who thought that the Church

791
00:55:28,480 --> 00:55:31,400
of England and the Reformation had not
gone far enough in rejecting what they call

792
00:55:31,480 --> 00:55:36,239
pokery or papism, right, and
so so they were really trying to like

793
00:55:36,320 --> 00:55:38,320
purify. So you had your Puritans
who were like, try to purify the

794
00:55:38,400 --> 00:55:40,960
Church of England and the Separatists who
were like, we're out of here,

795
00:55:42,039 --> 00:55:45,760
right, But they really the kind
kind of the same movement. And then

796
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:50,639
and then of course, uh,
my own ancestors on one side of my

797
00:55:50,719 --> 00:55:55,880
family, these Scottish Calvinists and who
also did not like Christmas. Oh really

798
00:55:57,119 --> 00:56:02,159
yeah, well some of them so
so John Knox Famus Lee said, supported

799
00:56:02,159 --> 00:56:07,960
the banning of Christmas on the grounds
that it was superstitious. Various Piritan writers

800
00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:13,079
referred to Christmas as being the trappings
of potpoury. The rags of the beast

801
00:56:13,800 --> 00:56:16,800
and so on, the rags of
the beasts. Yeah, so this is

802
00:56:17,599 --> 00:56:22,719
this is actually a really important thing
to think about, I think, because

803
00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:25,840
sometimes when people talk about this,
they'll say something like, well, the

804
00:56:25,880 --> 00:56:30,800
Puritans didn't ban Christmas. Actually they
did for a very short period of time,

805
00:56:31,199 --> 00:56:35,239
for about thirteen years, it was
actually illegal to celebrate Christmas, like

806
00:56:35,239 --> 00:56:37,920
straight up illegal to sell to Christmas
in England. Talk about that in a

807
00:56:37,920 --> 00:56:40,400
second. But they'll say something,
but they were rejecting it, This is

808
00:56:40,440 --> 00:56:44,679
what people will say. They'll say
they were rejecting it because of the over

809
00:56:44,760 --> 00:56:47,480
celebration and the tendency for people to
over celebrate. So the thing that I

810
00:56:47,599 --> 00:56:51,880
kind of want to point out here
is two things. One is is there's

811
00:56:51,920 --> 00:56:55,599
always been people, you know,
inveighing against don't over celebrate, but it

812
00:56:55,639 --> 00:57:00,599
had never been necessary to ban the
holiday out right right. The other thing,

813
00:57:00,679 --> 00:57:04,280
though, is to point out that
the act of celebration, for the

814
00:57:04,320 --> 00:57:12,920
pure sense, the act of celebration
itself was associated with superstition and specifically Roman

815
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:17,920
Catholicism. Yeah. Right, and
this even has weird manifestations. One of

816
00:57:17,960 --> 00:57:22,719
my areas of study that I did, like a whole project on in my

817
00:57:23,039 --> 00:57:30,719
graduate degree was actually the American Prohibition
movement and the Temperance movement, which I'm

818
00:57:30,760 --> 00:57:32,719
just really interested in for a lot
of reasons. But one of the interesting

819
00:57:32,800 --> 00:57:35,800
things that you'll find if you go
back and you read a lot of the

820
00:57:35,840 --> 00:57:39,000
early tempress literature, and I have. I've actually gone to the country's largest

821
00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:45,719
Temperance archives to read through a munch
of the early literature. What you'll find

822
00:57:45,880 --> 00:57:50,559
is that is that there is a
lot of frankly anti Catholic sentiment as a

823
00:57:50,559 --> 00:57:54,239
part of the literature of the early
Temperance movement. It's the German, Italian

824
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:59,840
Irish immigrants coming over here. They
drink, who drink, and that's causing

825
00:58:00,039 --> 00:58:01,840
the problem. Actually, it was
actually probably the saloons that were causing the

826
00:58:01,880 --> 00:58:06,320
problem, not the beer gardens.
But that's a different conversation. We could

827
00:58:06,320 --> 00:58:09,559
talk sometimes about the symbolism of going
from we all get together as a family

828
00:58:09,599 --> 00:58:12,880
to have some beer, and we're
sitting at a table looking at each other.

829
00:58:12,920 --> 00:58:15,639
Too, I'm sitting at a bar
facing a bartender. There's an important

830
00:58:15,920 --> 00:58:21,960
important shift that happens there as part
of the Industrial Revolution. But anyway,

831
00:58:22,039 --> 00:58:25,559
different conversation for a different day.
The thing I want to really emphasize though,

832
00:58:25,639 --> 00:58:30,039
is that all of the stuff,
like the celebration, the drunkenness,

833
00:58:30,440 --> 00:58:32,920
but then also like the Mass and
the liturgy right the high things and a

834
00:58:32,920 --> 00:58:37,639
lot of things about the feast day
or the Puritan that was all a package

835
00:58:37,679 --> 00:58:42,679
and it had to all be rejected. And so this leads the outright banning

836
00:58:43,800 --> 00:58:47,719
starting in sixteen forty five. That
again in sixteen forty seven they're the Passion

837
00:58:47,840 --> 00:58:53,760
Ordinance in England abolishing the Peace of
Christmas, Easter and whitson er Pentecost yea

838
00:58:54,199 --> 00:58:59,480
too, abolishing Easter as well,
like which people always forget about that,

839
00:58:59,679 --> 00:59:04,239
Wow, we always forget about that, and that that remains in force until

840
00:59:04,239 --> 00:59:07,880
the restoration in sixteen sixty. In
fact, there was a really fun kind

841
00:59:07,920 --> 00:59:12,119
of a popular song. I wish
I remember to put the lyrics in my

842
00:59:12,199 --> 00:59:15,679
notes for this talk, but there
was like a kind of a fun popular

843
00:59:15,719 --> 00:59:19,960
song celebrating because now we know,
you know that Charles has had, Charles

844
00:59:20,000 --> 00:59:22,239
has come back, Charles the second, because now we know when Christmas is

845
00:59:22,639 --> 00:59:24,880
yeah yeah, and so there've been
because have been like a lot of underground

846
00:59:24,920 --> 00:59:30,320
celebrations and things like that. I
didn't like think about it today if we

847
00:59:30,400 --> 00:59:34,199
said, I mean they did it
during COVID some right, Right, they're

848
00:59:34,239 --> 00:59:37,039
like, you can't celebrate Christas this
year, and it's like yeah, what

849
00:59:38,119 --> 00:59:42,440
yeah, so yeah, this is
like this this was all a package seal.

850
00:59:42,480 --> 00:59:45,159
The pure tends to believe that by
persian the liturgy and the iconography of

851
00:59:45,239 --> 00:59:47,360
the papal religion, they would also
be able to usher in an era of

852
00:59:47,480 --> 00:59:52,559
moral improvement. Right, And that's
the kind of the thing that's a continuous

853
00:59:52,599 --> 00:59:57,239
theme of people who want to get
rid of Christmas is that by doing so,

854
00:59:57,519 --> 01:00:00,480
we'll make we'll become morally better as
a society. Right. That it's

855
01:00:00,679 --> 01:00:07,880
that Christmas is is associated with excess
or it's associated with corruption, like decadence

856
01:00:07,960 --> 01:00:12,840
of some sort, which is funny
because like it's just interesting because that's the

857
01:00:13,079 --> 01:00:15,119
danger of the feast. You know. It's like, right, you think

858
01:00:15,159 --> 01:00:19,559
people don't get drunk at weddings?
Right? Do you think people don't get

859
01:00:19,639 --> 01:00:21,960
drunk at funerals? Do you think
people don't? You know, It's like

860
01:00:22,559 --> 01:00:27,719
when you gather together to celebrate something, it has uh, there's a kind

861
01:00:27,800 --> 01:00:31,599
of ecstasy there. There's something going
on which is both very positive but also

862
01:00:31,719 --> 01:00:36,760
dangerous and so you kind of have
to navigate that line so that it doesn't

863
01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:40,519
fall into And it also is a
revealer. It reveals it, you know,

864
01:00:40,679 --> 01:00:45,679
the feast can reveal the nature of
a group, Yeah, and reveal

865
01:00:45,800 --> 01:00:49,679
its quality, you know, because
if it gets out of hand, then

866
01:00:49,719 --> 01:00:54,079
it also is showing something about the
nature of that communion. Yes, that

867
01:00:54,280 --> 01:01:00,280
is is a really important note.
H. The other the other thing is

868
01:01:00,400 --> 01:01:05,559
that when you when you try really
hard to repress this, yeah, right,

869
01:01:05,880 --> 01:01:07,599
that that it will pop up again. It will pop up in some

870
01:01:07,880 --> 01:01:13,239
really dangerously excessive way. That's right, right, in the same way that

871
01:01:14,119 --> 01:01:17,159
you know, uh, the if
you you can have Christian liturgy or you

872
01:01:17,199 --> 01:01:21,840
can have the occult like pick like
you know, like but but there's a

873
01:01:21,920 --> 01:01:25,760
liturgical impulse in human beings that they
that you know, everybody has to participate

874
01:01:25,880 --> 01:01:30,039
in something. So also like there's
so many things about it, like social

875
01:01:30,119 --> 01:01:35,000
dancing for example. Oh yeah,
great example of that where it's like it's

876
01:01:35,079 --> 01:01:39,360
like, can you be at a
at a feast where you dance with someone

877
01:01:39,440 --> 01:01:45,320
else's wife? Can you? Is
that possible? And then what can you

878
01:01:45,920 --> 01:01:52,719
maintain the order and the right the
right ordering in that kind of that place

879
01:01:52,800 --> 01:01:58,599
that could reveal your your darkness.
Let's say, yeah, yeah, can

880
01:01:58,639 --> 01:02:00,639
I tell you the jokes? Yeah, this is a joke that we back

881
01:02:01,159 --> 01:02:06,440
as a Baptist growing up, we
told about ourselves. So it's it's not

882
01:02:06,559 --> 01:02:12,559
intended to be cruel. How Baptist
is. So it goes like, how

883
01:02:12,639 --> 01:02:15,360
Baptists am I? How Baptists are
you? I'm so Baptist that we don't

884
01:02:15,360 --> 01:02:19,880
play old Maid in the front of
the house because if somebody drives through by

885
01:02:19,960 --> 01:02:22,480
a fifty miles an hour looks through
the windows seas of playing cards, they'll

886
01:02:22,480 --> 01:02:24,320
assume we're playing poker. If we're
playing poker, we're gambling. If you're

887
01:02:24,320 --> 01:02:28,719
gambling, you're forticating. We all
know that fortication at least to premarital dancing.

888
01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:31,679
That's all right, Yeah, anyway, just yeah, oh, this

889
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:35,719
is a joke that we kind of
told about ourselves. But I think there's

890
01:02:35,719 --> 01:02:38,039
really something to that. Social dancing
is, which is something I was not

891
01:02:38,360 --> 01:02:43,000
allowed to do growing up, and
then I married why my wife, who

892
01:02:43,039 --> 01:02:46,280
loves dancing, and so we you
know, so she sort of like introduced

893
01:02:46,320 --> 01:02:51,920
me to it, and it was
just like, man, it was always

894
01:02:51,960 --> 01:02:54,559
a weird moment the first time that
I danced a musing it was bizarre,

895
01:02:54,639 --> 01:02:58,760
and the reason was bizarre. I
discovered two things. One is I really

896
01:02:58,920 --> 01:03:02,079
like dancing, but the other is
that I suddenly realized what music was for.

897
01:03:04,400 --> 01:03:07,320
Like I grew up, I was
a violinist and I did a lot

898
01:03:07,360 --> 01:03:10,280
of like Irish fiddle music, like
jigs and reels, which are just down

899
01:03:10,480 --> 01:03:14,920
dancing. But I'd never danced in
my life, and so my wife I

900
01:03:15,079 --> 01:03:16,760
used to do, like, we
got really into a folk dance at a

901
01:03:16,760 --> 01:03:21,719
period and we did a bunch of
Scottish country dance and the first time I

902
01:03:21,880 --> 01:03:27,239
like danced to a reel, but
I was actually doing the real Suddenly everything

903
01:03:27,280 --> 01:03:30,159
about the music clicked in the place
for me, and it was just this

904
01:03:30,480 --> 01:03:34,679
very bizarre moment of realizing that that
like there was a whole half of me

905
01:03:34,800 --> 01:03:37,639
that was dead and then it just
came to life and it was it was

906
01:03:37,719 --> 01:03:43,199
just very it was very strange.
So yeah, it all this to say,

907
01:03:44,119 --> 01:03:45,480
there was this period, you know, a relatively short period, but

908
01:03:45,519 --> 01:03:50,800
a pretty infamous period has really scarred
English society for a long time, where

909
01:03:50,840 --> 01:03:54,079
it was actually against the law to
celebrate Christmas, and of course The real

910
01:03:54,119 --> 01:04:00,280
irony in all of this is that
the direct descendants of Puritans will now vociferously

911
01:04:00,760 --> 01:04:05,440
to have a Nativity scene in a
public space, right to fight for the

912
01:04:05,519 --> 01:04:11,800
use of merry Christmas instead of just
happy Holidays and so on, because there's

913
01:04:11,840 --> 01:04:14,639
this stickiness about Christmas, like you
can do whatever you want to, but

914
01:04:14,800 --> 01:04:18,280
Christmas will win. Eventually, it
will win. And plenty of other people

915
01:04:18,320 --> 01:04:21,039
have tried to get rid of it
since the time of the Puritans. We

916
01:04:21,079 --> 01:04:25,239
could talk about talking about some of
the moment, but of course there's like

917
01:04:25,280 --> 01:04:29,559
a modern manifestation of Puritanism that is
sort of like the political correct that PC

918
01:04:29,679 --> 01:04:33,519
woke culture, right, that tries
really hard to get rid of Christmas,

919
01:04:33,639 --> 01:04:36,559
or to change Christmas or to like
reimagine it in some way. I mean,

920
01:04:36,599 --> 01:04:41,159
think about any modern TV show.
It's been a thing in American network

921
01:04:41,199 --> 01:04:45,360
television for decades that you have to
have a Christmas episode. Yeah, right,

922
01:04:45,440 --> 01:04:47,480
And so one of the things that
you'll see in more recent TV shows

923
01:04:47,800 --> 01:04:50,960
is that whenever the Christmas episode comes
around, they have to do more and

924
01:04:51,079 --> 01:04:55,840
more to kind of like recontextualize what
Christmas means. But they can't get away

925
01:04:55,880 --> 01:05:01,199
from doing the episode and Christmas man
Christmas aesthetics. They are powerful. You

926
01:05:01,360 --> 01:05:08,159
cannot get rid of that. Like
just it's weird because even like even the

927
01:05:08,639 --> 01:05:13,639
the even the all the efforts of
all the marketing companies to reduce it and

928
01:05:13,760 --> 01:05:16,400
to remove the Christian part of it
and to stylize it, and to do

929
01:05:16,559 --> 01:05:23,000
that is just feeding it. Like
you cannot get rid of of the Christian

930
01:05:23,199 --> 01:05:28,800
the Christmas like visuals, the smell, the music. It just there's no

931
01:05:28,920 --> 01:05:31,960
way now, like I imagine trying
to to get rid of that. Yeah,

932
01:05:32,760 --> 01:05:35,599
yeah, so actually you mentioned the
smell. I wanted to make sure

933
01:05:35,639 --> 01:05:41,280
I didn't forget to mention this.
So because New England, New England specifically

934
01:05:41,480 --> 01:05:45,519
other parts of the US were found
that we're settled by different people, many

935
01:05:45,559 --> 01:05:48,159
of who were like had no trouble
with Christmas at all. But but New

936
01:05:48,199 --> 01:05:53,519
England was settled by Puritans and separatists, right. And one of the really

937
01:05:53,599 --> 01:05:58,599
interesting things there is that at some
point in the history of New England,

938
01:05:58,719 --> 01:06:04,280
was before the American Revolution, the
towns in New England would actually hire mince

939
01:06:04,480 --> 01:06:09,400
snippers. They were called mince snippers. So the job of a mince snipper

940
01:06:09,480 --> 01:06:11,840
is to walk through the village to
walk through the town on Christmas Day and

941
01:06:12,039 --> 01:06:16,840
sniff the air and make sure nobody's
cooking Christmas foods on Christmas Day. Man,

942
01:06:18,039 --> 01:06:23,079
and you could be like really severely
punished, really severely punished for celebrating

943
01:06:23,159 --> 01:06:28,000
Christmas, you know, at that
particular time. So and at that time,

944
01:06:28,280 --> 01:06:30,400
like the whole idea of Christmas celebration
again, like that's something the German

945
01:06:30,480 --> 01:06:34,760
immigrants at the end of the street
might be doing, but good Puritan families

946
01:06:34,920 --> 01:06:41,239
were participating in that. So to
kind of get up up to modern times,

947
01:06:41,440 --> 01:06:45,400
the early nineteenth century is really a
renaissance for Christmas celebrations in the anglosphere.

948
01:06:45,880 --> 01:06:48,880
And this is for two reasons.
What is the Oxford Movement, which

949
01:06:48,920 --> 01:06:53,639
is basically this, It was like
a movement within the Church of England to

950
01:06:54,400 --> 01:07:00,480
kind of return to like a more
patristic basis for the tradition. It's kind

951
01:07:00,519 --> 01:07:04,320
of when Anglo Catholicism as such sort
of develops into a whole flower right and

952
01:07:05,119 --> 01:07:10,159
kind of right along the same time, you had a guy named Charles Dickens

953
01:07:10,519 --> 01:07:13,599
and I know they made a movie
about him a couple of years ago or

954
01:07:13,639 --> 01:07:16,480
something called The Man who Invented Christmas, which I actually did not see because

955
01:07:16,599 --> 01:07:20,480
I hate seeing movies about historical figures
that I like or I know a lot

956
01:07:20,519 --> 01:07:25,360
about, because I'll just get angry, especially now it's actually now, right

957
01:07:25,679 --> 01:07:28,760
twenty years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't know what they're

958
01:07:28,760 --> 01:07:30,519
going to do. But so I
don't know if the movie is are any

959
01:07:30,559 --> 01:07:33,320
good or not, but it's it's
like, you know, there's something about

960
01:07:33,360 --> 01:07:36,119
the title there, the man who
invented Christmas is like a little cheeky.

961
01:07:38,000 --> 01:07:43,800
But also also it's not totally wrong, right, Like I said, Christmas

962
01:07:43,840 --> 01:07:46,679
had been pretty had taken a pretty
big hit in the seventeenth century and it

963
01:07:46,880 --> 01:07:51,519
was being celebrated in England again,
but also it was it was still like

964
01:07:51,679 --> 01:07:56,840
there was just a lot of every
year like kind of like hand ringing around

965
01:07:56,920 --> 01:08:00,920
the celebration of Christmas and et cetera. So, but this really between the

966
01:08:00,000 --> 01:08:04,039
oxtor of movement and they're trying to
go back and basically revive the medieval practices

967
01:08:04,079 --> 01:08:09,360
of these feasts, and then Charles
Dickens coming along and writing a Christmas Carol

968
01:08:11,639 --> 01:08:15,399
did a ton to revive traditional celebrations
of the holiday, focused especially on the

969
01:08:15,479 --> 01:08:19,760
ancient theme of charitable works at this
time, which again is a very important

970
01:08:19,800 --> 01:08:23,760
part of traditionally celebrating Christmas. And
to this day, I mean, you

971
01:08:23,800 --> 01:08:27,119
say what you want to say about
Americans, but to this day it makes

972
01:08:27,159 --> 01:08:30,520
this time of you that we are
the most likely to give to charity,

973
01:08:30,600 --> 01:08:33,079
even people who don't think about or
give anything to the poor the rest of

974
01:08:33,119 --> 01:08:38,560
the year. On Christmas, there's
suddenly it's like generosity that where our hearts

975
01:08:38,560 --> 01:08:41,359
will open up, you know,
a little bit more than they were opened

976
01:08:41,359 --> 01:08:45,760
before. It's interesting that Dickens.
It's funny because now I'd never thought about

977
01:08:45,800 --> 01:08:48,239
that, but I think now that
it's called a Christmas carol. It's a

978
01:08:48,359 --> 01:08:54,880
secular you know, it's not directly
Christian. It kind of floats around the

979
01:08:54,960 --> 01:08:59,039
themes like what you described about the
Christmas carols. That's exactly why it's called

980
01:08:59,079 --> 01:09:02,600
a Christmas carol. And it's it's
it's so interesting because there are of course

981
01:09:03,159 --> 01:09:08,439
references to people going to church,
references to Christ, references to like the

982
01:09:08,520 --> 01:09:12,319
theme of the day that the little
babe and the major who makes the lame

983
01:09:12,359 --> 01:09:15,399
walk, and you know, et
cetera. Right, that's all in there.

984
01:09:15,520 --> 01:09:18,199
But you're right, it's a it's
not a liturgical story. It's not

985
01:09:18,399 --> 01:09:23,720
just a retelling of the Nativity narratives
from the Gospels or something like that.

986
01:09:23,840 --> 01:09:27,600
It's this sort of thing that's happening
around the church, right in the around

987
01:09:27,640 --> 01:09:30,880
the church, specifically throughout the life
of one man, and it kind of

988
01:09:30,960 --> 01:09:34,960
creates this really I think, I
think, what is so genius about the

989
01:09:35,000 --> 01:09:38,239
Christmas Carol. I mean, we
should do a whole video just on it

990
01:09:39,479 --> 01:09:43,520
is that it We're gonna talk in
a moment about these idea of like sort

991
01:09:43,520 --> 01:09:45,479
of notots in time, right,
which is really what a feast day is,

992
01:09:45,680 --> 01:09:49,880
and the Christmas Carol takes that idea
runs with it because it ties Scrooge's

993
01:09:50,039 --> 01:09:55,920
entire life together over the course of
one Christmas to the next, right,

994
01:09:56,039 --> 01:10:00,880
which which becomes like a really powerful
way of thinking about our own lives.

995
01:10:00,000 --> 01:10:03,840
Right, you know, where were
we on this feast day? What person

996
01:10:03,920 --> 01:10:09,159
were we on this piece? Stay
So, in the United States, like

997
01:10:09,239 --> 01:10:12,239
I said, Christmas was really seen
more as more of an ethnic holiday,

998
01:10:12,479 --> 01:10:15,680
which meant that you actually had whole
communities that just didn't celebrate Christmas, which

999
01:10:15,760 --> 01:10:23,079
is kind of unthinkable now until about
the late nineteenth century, and it really

1000
01:10:23,159 --> 01:10:27,439
starts to be celebrated in the late
nineteenth century thanks to the works of poets

1001
01:10:27,880 --> 01:10:30,600
like the guy whose name I'm forgetting
right now who wrote that was called a

1002
01:10:30,680 --> 01:10:33,840
Visit from Saint Nicholas twas the Night
before Christmas, you know that poem,

1003
01:10:34,439 --> 01:10:39,720
and then which which which really basically
kicks off the whole idea of gift giving

1004
01:10:39,760 --> 01:10:43,239
at Christmas in the United States.
Yeah, and joins the feasts of St.

1005
01:10:43,399 --> 01:10:45,680
Nicholas with Christmas, because I was
wondered, like when did that happen

1006
01:10:45,720 --> 01:10:47,359
at some point for us? It's
crushed together in the West. Yeah,

1007
01:10:47,640 --> 01:10:50,800
yeah, and Nicholas and Christmas are
the same. And then you you like

1008
01:10:50,880 --> 01:10:54,920
I had a Romanian priest in our
parish for a few years, and he

1009
01:10:55,079 --> 01:10:58,119
was really annoyed that we gave gifts
at Christmas, and it was like really

1010
01:10:58,239 --> 01:11:00,039
trying to like make sure that we
give or gifts, you know, on

1011
01:11:00,159 --> 01:11:02,560
Saint Nicholas Day, which, oh, that's so fun. He didn't succeed

1012
01:11:02,680 --> 01:11:06,800
though, like it nice tries too
now it's too deep, Like yeah,

1013
01:11:06,880 --> 01:11:11,119
yeah, you can't, you can't
do it. And then there was also

1014
01:11:13,039 --> 01:11:16,800
Harriet beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom's
Cabin, which is I guess a little

1015
01:11:16,840 --> 01:11:21,479
infamous now, but anyway, she
also wrote a story I think it's called

1016
01:11:21,479 --> 01:11:25,760
A Christmas in New England, which
did a lot to kind of popularize the

1017
01:11:25,840 --> 01:11:28,479
celebration of Christmas. And like,
the whole focus of A Christmas in New

1018
01:11:28,520 --> 01:11:31,560
England, right is on this sort
of like immigrant community within New England that's

1019
01:11:31,560 --> 01:11:35,399
celebrating the holiday and that other people
kind of get involved and participate in it.

1020
01:11:35,560 --> 01:11:41,880
And so yeah, so the late
nineteenth century is really when Christmas takes

1021
01:11:41,920 --> 01:11:44,920
off in the United States, and
this culminates in its declaration as a federal

1022
01:11:45,000 --> 01:11:49,520
holiday in eighteen seventy. And it's
important to note that for Americans that wasn't

1023
01:11:49,560 --> 01:11:53,399
even a holiday. Great because it
wasn't even a holiday up to the time,

1024
01:11:53,560 --> 01:11:57,479
and it's totally unthinkable now. But
like George Washington didn't celebrate Chris forg

1025
01:11:57,720 --> 01:12:00,039
on Christmas, like like it did
just work on Christmas. He thought that

1026
01:12:00,279 --> 01:12:04,840
he attacked the Hessians were Germans on
Christmas because they were celebrating and it was

1027
01:12:04,920 --> 01:12:09,199
like that's like his famous like crossing
the Delaware attacks the Hessians. What if

1028
01:12:09,279 --> 01:12:14,079
the most important victories of the American
Revolutionary War worked because the Americans weren't celebrating

1029
01:12:14,119 --> 01:12:17,800
on Christmas Day and the and the
Hessians work right. So it's like these

1030
01:12:17,880 --> 01:12:23,359
various, like very interesting kind of
history there in our early status as a

1031
01:12:24,159 --> 01:12:27,640
early time as a nation, and
then Christmas kind of developing more and more

1032
01:12:27,720 --> 01:12:30,920
firsus this immigrant thing, and that
now it's totally universal. And so there's

1033
01:12:30,920 --> 01:12:33,359
a lot more that we could probably
say about the symbolism of the holiday.

1034
01:12:34,279 --> 01:12:36,680
I kind of run out of time
here to talk about the use of like

1035
01:12:36,800 --> 01:12:43,000
Santa Claus as a marketing image.
Yeah, where Coca Cola specifically, and

1036
01:12:43,119 --> 01:12:45,720
also but I think it's important.
I think this is an argument that people

1037
01:12:46,039 --> 01:12:49,560
use a lot, is that in
some ways, you know, Santa Claus

1038
01:12:49,600 --> 01:12:54,239
to Day was made up by Coca
Cola, and I really I resist that

1039
01:12:54,319 --> 01:12:57,039
to some extent. I agree,
I agree. You know, I think

1040
01:12:57,119 --> 01:13:02,159
that the character of Father Christmas and
Saint Nicholas were there in the nineteenth century.

1041
01:13:02,239 --> 01:13:05,800
You see the characters, and then
they kind of get fused into one

1042
01:13:06,920 --> 01:13:12,359
one one character, which is our
modern Santa Claus. But and then and

1043
01:13:12,439 --> 01:13:15,000
then the marketing companies kind of jump
on that, and you know, Coca

1044
01:13:15,039 --> 01:13:18,079
Cola did simplify the costume. Let's
say in terms of the white band and

1045
01:13:18,119 --> 01:13:21,479
stuff and need it. Let's be
honest, like a little more palatable to

1046
01:13:21,600 --> 01:13:26,079
some people, right, like well, less less of a bishops right exactly,

1047
01:13:26,199 --> 01:13:28,880
some guy with a crozier and a
Bishopsmeier. Like that's not gonna that's

1048
01:13:28,960 --> 01:13:33,760
not gonna play in because like post
yeah exactly, like post Puritan Erica.

1049
01:13:33,960 --> 01:13:39,720
Yeah. But but nonetheless, like
they stumble onto all this. This is

1050
01:13:39,760 --> 01:13:43,439
why when you talk about how Christmas
is so sticky, it's like, you

1051
01:13:43,520 --> 01:13:45,520
know, people, I did a
video on Rudolph the Red Noos Reindeer,

1052
01:13:46,000 --> 01:13:49,960
which is basically was made up by
like, what was it, one of

1053
01:13:50,039 --> 01:13:54,439
the big department stores in the United
States, and it was given out at

1054
01:13:54,520 --> 01:13:58,439
Christmas as a gift to people buying
at the department store to get people into

1055
01:13:58,479 --> 01:14:01,880
the store. But they stuck bumbled
onto true things. You know, there's

1056
01:14:01,920 --> 01:14:05,920
something about how symbolism happens. And
I think in the symbolism of Santa Claus

1057
01:14:05,960 --> 01:14:09,880
and the way that we think about
the sleigh and everything, all of these

1058
01:14:10,239 --> 01:14:15,680
these are very powerful images that that
that even though marketing companies came up with

1059
01:14:15,760 --> 01:14:18,680
them or brought them up, it
doesn't really matter if we recognize in them

1060
01:14:19,399 --> 01:14:24,920
some images that have weight, and
the fact that they're remembered means that there's

1061
01:14:25,239 --> 01:14:29,079
there's some actual weight in those images. Yeah, I'm a huge sucker for

1062
01:14:29,159 --> 01:14:34,119
Santa Claus movies in general. Miracle
All thirty fourth Street is a really There

1063
01:14:34,119 --> 01:14:38,920
are two remixs to They made it
twice and both both versions are quite good.

1064
01:14:38,960 --> 01:14:45,079
I think there's also there was an
animated film about Santa Claus, like

1065
01:14:45,239 --> 01:14:47,239
us. Santa Claus is like a
family dynasty that came out a few years

1066
01:14:47,319 --> 01:14:53,960
later called a few years ago rather
called Arthur Christmas, and it's a it's

1067
01:14:54,000 --> 01:14:57,640
a really interesting movie. It is. It does a lot of sort of

1068
01:14:57,720 --> 01:15:00,760
interesting things, like tries to subvert
the Santa Claus symbolism at the outset and

1069
01:15:00,840 --> 01:15:04,039
then shows all the problems that that
causes, and then by the end things

1070
01:15:04,079 --> 01:15:08,359
have to kind of revert back to
the traditional pattern. And I haven't seen

1071
01:15:08,359 --> 01:15:10,760
it to watch that. Yeah,
it's interesting. It's really I would love

1072
01:15:10,840 --> 01:15:13,319
to know your thoughts about it.
It's it's it's an interesting one, but

1073
01:15:13,920 --> 01:15:16,319
but uh, but yeah, I
think that it's one of these weird things

1074
01:15:16,319 --> 01:15:19,800
because actually the Soviet Union, of
course tried to also abolish Christmas, and

1075
01:15:19,960 --> 01:15:23,680
when they did, they just replace
it with a winter holiday, and they

1076
01:15:23,720 --> 01:15:27,840
had a they had Old Man Winter
you know who looks was dressed exactly like

1077
01:15:27,920 --> 01:15:30,159
Santa Claus, right, and he's
the one that brings you to the presence,

1078
01:15:30,239 --> 01:15:32,399
now, you know, you know, and uh, there's something about

1079
01:15:32,479 --> 01:15:36,159
this, right. Uh. All
of the attempts actually to revive or or

1080
01:15:36,279 --> 01:15:42,319
create competing winter holidays in the second
world around us today. Going back to

1081
01:15:42,359 --> 01:15:45,520
the French Revolution, my favorite one
is the do you guys, do you

1082
01:15:45,560 --> 01:15:47,960
have like the Three Kings k because
that's something that you yeah, we do

1083
01:15:48,079 --> 01:15:50,720
that here. Yeah, yeah,
So that's that's not that's a that's a

1084
01:15:50,760 --> 01:15:54,319
Prench thing. It's it's not something
that I grew up with, but it's

1085
01:15:54,319 --> 01:15:57,399
a prince thing. Uh. And
so you'll you'll you'll get a kick out

1086
01:15:57,399 --> 01:16:00,840
of knowing that. During the French
Revolution they renamed the Three Kings cake to

1087
01:16:00,920 --> 01:16:05,159
the Equality Cake, which is which
is amazing because the original story about the

1088
01:16:05,239 --> 01:16:09,319
Three Kings is that you have like
the highest thing becomes low, and then

1089
01:16:09,359 --> 01:16:12,000
the high thing comes down and venerates
the thing that's become low. That was

1090
01:16:12,039 --> 01:16:13,920
it, you know, like and
then it was like, you know,

1091
01:16:14,000 --> 01:16:16,800
equality cake. It's all perfectly,
it's all perfectly. Even they don't put

1092
01:16:16,840 --> 01:16:19,319
they don't put the sea. I
mean they don't put the seed in there.

1093
01:16:19,359 --> 01:16:23,359
They don't I assume not because it's
like, hey, someone gets someone

1094
01:16:23,399 --> 01:16:29,479
specially if you find yeah, have
that it's just the cake. Yeah.

1095
01:16:29,880 --> 01:16:33,319
Anyway, it's like in Quebec we
like in French, in Quebec we Santa

1096
01:16:33,359 --> 01:16:38,760
Claus. We called him Father Christmas. Yeah, like that's how and that's

1097
01:16:38,800 --> 01:16:45,520
a that's ael and that's like that. There's this whole character that appeared in

1098
01:16:45,600 --> 01:16:48,840
Western Europe and in France that had
the had the hat and was very similar

1099
01:16:49,159 --> 01:16:54,119
to the way that we understand uh
uh Santa Claus. Now, so it's

1100
01:16:54,159 --> 01:16:57,359
like all these characters get fused.
Yeah, it seems like it's a thing

1101
01:16:57,399 --> 01:17:01,159
that that has to happen, you
know. Yeah, So I want to

1102
01:17:02,720 --> 01:17:04,960
there's a lot more we could say
about this, but there are a few

1103
01:17:04,960 --> 01:17:08,760
things that I would to point out
that are like really beautiful to me about

1104
01:17:08,800 --> 01:17:11,800
all of this that we've kind of
been talking about. And then I'm going

1105
01:17:11,880 --> 01:17:15,039
to give you what I call my
midwit defense of Christmas. All Right,

1106
01:17:15,640 --> 01:17:20,199
So the first thing is just to
say that kind of against the general detractors

1107
01:17:20,479 --> 01:17:25,119
of Christmas, right, that the
Christmas is actually not our most over commercial

1108
01:17:25,479 --> 01:17:29,840
time of the year. We're always
over commercialized. Christmas is the only time

1109
01:17:29,840 --> 01:17:31,840
of year that we notice it,
right because you know, if you think

1110
01:17:31,840 --> 01:17:35,960
about like all the kids and like
the one dollar you know, like the

1111
01:17:36,039 --> 01:17:41,000
bargain bands and stuff at Target or
Walmart or whatever, like those are there

1112
01:17:41,039 --> 01:17:43,880
all year, you know, but
only at Christmas do you notice it and

1113
01:17:43,960 --> 01:17:46,920
get irritated about it. Yeah.
I think it is a really beautiful time

1114
01:17:47,039 --> 01:17:51,720
where the sort of the say,
the soft iconic plasm of American religion gives

1115
01:17:51,800 --> 01:17:57,399
way to not just like putting up
Nativity scenes, the statues of Jesus,

1116
01:17:57,479 --> 01:18:00,560
Joseph and marry like in your house, in your yard in the village square,

1117
01:18:00,640 --> 01:18:03,640
right, but actually defending that practice
in the court of public opinion,

1118
01:18:04,159 --> 01:18:10,600
which is just really something to think
about. Yeah. And it's also the

1119
01:18:10,680 --> 01:18:13,199
time of year, like I mentioned, but by the numbers, we're the

1120
01:18:13,239 --> 01:18:16,000
most generous, right, It's the
one day a year that even confirmed heathens

1121
01:18:16,039 --> 01:18:19,079
will show up to church. So
I was a pastor and from a family

1122
01:18:19,119 --> 01:18:23,640
of pastors, and I get that
there's always something in you that wants to

1123
01:18:23,720 --> 01:18:27,039
complain when somebody shows up on Christmas
Day or an East or Pasca and you

1124
01:18:27,079 --> 01:18:29,399
haven't seen them a year. Yeah, you know, it's like, oh,

1125
01:18:29,479 --> 01:18:31,039
so now you're here, right,
But like you could also flip that

1126
01:18:31,119 --> 01:18:34,000
around though, and think about the
fact that there's something so potent about this

1127
01:18:34,159 --> 01:18:38,600
day that even the most confirmed heathen
will still show up to light a candle,

1128
01:18:39,000 --> 01:18:41,199
or they'll still show up to him
mid night, like they'll still come

1129
01:18:41,239 --> 01:18:43,359
to church with their kids, like
they take their kids to church the one

1130
01:18:43,439 --> 01:18:46,239
day here there's something really special so
that they really potent about this day.

1131
01:18:46,640 --> 01:18:49,359
So I want to kind of explain
that. I'll give you what I call

1132
01:18:49,560 --> 01:18:56,479
my midwit apology or defense of Christmas. And I call it a mid with

1133
01:18:57,600 --> 01:19:00,720
some people know I'm a big fan
of like the format the mid with me,

1134
01:19:00,399 --> 01:19:04,479
right, And so you know,
I'm sure we can put one up

1135
01:19:04,520 --> 01:19:06,520
here on the screen is something.
But you know, the idea is this

1136
01:19:06,680 --> 01:19:10,000
is you have like a really dumb
person that went in and a really smart

1137
01:19:10,039 --> 01:19:11,880
person at the other end, and
there's a dull curve for the middle,

1138
01:19:12,079 --> 01:19:15,840
and the dull curve of the middle
that guy's the Midwi. So in this

1139
01:19:15,960 --> 01:19:19,560
case, the meme is really the
really simple person who says, celebrate Christmas

1140
01:19:19,600 --> 01:19:23,680
because it is jesus birthday, right, And then at the other end you

1141
01:19:23,760 --> 01:19:27,199
have the saint who says the same
thing, celebrate Christmas because of Jesus' birthday.

1142
01:19:27,680 --> 01:19:30,680
And for a lot of people,
and I'll I'll go as far as

1143
01:19:30,720 --> 01:19:33,680
to say, probably the majority of
the people watching this video, that is

1144
01:19:33,840 --> 01:19:38,680
enough. That is enough. But
for all the people kind of like in

1145
01:19:38,760 --> 01:19:43,720
the middle there the source, yes, the sources people, Yes, we

1146
01:19:43,840 --> 01:19:46,880
need like a little more kind of
an explanation of understanding of why we're doing

1147
01:19:46,920 --> 01:19:49,560
with things that we're doing. And
again, as I said to me,

1148
01:19:49,640 --> 01:19:55,920
this is a really important this is
really important thing. So I'm gonna read

1149
01:19:55,960 --> 01:19:59,720
some little bits and kind of talk
through some bits from Charles Taylor's work A

1150
01:19:59,760 --> 01:20:02,960
secon Your Age, which is one
of the most important books that I think

1151
01:20:03,039 --> 01:20:06,880
anybody could read right now. And
what's amazing is that a lot of the

1152
01:20:08,000 --> 01:20:13,439
ideas that I have really better benefited
from here on the symbolic world listening to

1153
01:20:13,520 --> 01:20:16,279
your videos and conversations over the last
several years. I first encountered in Taylor

1154
01:20:16,359 --> 01:20:18,840
and then when I saw your videos. I was like, oh, somebody

1155
01:20:18,880 --> 01:20:21,680
else is talking about that same thing, right, and it was just really

1156
01:20:23,720 --> 01:20:29,239
validating a certain way. So he
talks about basically this idea that there are

1157
01:20:29,319 --> 01:20:31,720
three kinds of time. For medieval
man, there are three kinds of time,

1158
01:20:32,680 --> 01:20:39,000
and the first one is the In
one of our previous videos, I

1159
01:20:39,079 --> 01:20:42,039
refer to this as the difference between
cronos and cairos as two kinds of time.

1160
01:20:42,239 --> 01:20:45,039
But Taylor says there's three. Right. So there's first of all,

1161
01:20:45,039 --> 01:20:49,560
there's there's chronos, which we could
refer to as was what Taylor calls homogeneous

1162
01:20:49,720 --> 01:20:54,720
or empty time, right, which
from modernity is the central form of time,

1163
01:20:55,359 --> 01:20:59,199
right, history as a series of
accidents, right in the philosophical sense,

1164
01:20:59,239 --> 01:21:01,359
like history as a series of accidents
cause and effect and just sort of

1165
01:21:01,399 --> 01:21:06,119
this cause and effect in an endless
chain with no particular meaning to it,

1166
01:21:06,279 --> 01:21:12,279
right. And then the second kind
of time is what we could call chirotic

1167
01:21:12,479 --> 01:21:16,720
time. And so chirotic time would
be time being filled with meanings. So

1168
01:21:17,199 --> 01:21:21,039
Taylor says that the time of Carnival, for instance, is chirotic. That

1169
01:21:21,239 --> 01:21:28,159
is, the timeline encounters chirotic knots. So you have this this straight line,

1170
01:21:28,199 --> 01:21:30,479
and the suddenly you get kind of
like a knot where everything gets kind

1171
01:21:30,479 --> 01:21:34,760
of snarled up and bended together,
and moments whose nature and placing calls for

1172
01:21:35,000 --> 01:21:41,800
reversal, followed by others demanding rededication, and still others which are approach Parusia.

1173
01:21:42,159 --> 01:21:45,840
So this is his Shrove Tuesday,
lent Easter right, So Shrove Tuesday,

1174
01:21:45,920 --> 01:21:48,720
that's Marty Grass, right, is
this a great amount of carnival or

1175
01:21:48,760 --> 01:21:54,439
reversal followed by lent for rededication and
then Easter, which is like Parusia,

1176
01:21:54,479 --> 01:21:58,439
the coming, the reviewing. So
now there are chirotic knots in the stories

1177
01:21:58,479 --> 01:22:01,760
we tell about ourselves at our time. Revolutions themselves are understood by their errors

1178
01:22:01,880 --> 01:22:05,520
and supporters as such chirotic moments.
You think about whatever country you live in

1179
01:22:05,840 --> 01:22:11,880
and the important political moments or like
revolutions that you've had. In my case,

1180
01:22:11,960 --> 01:22:15,000
like the American Revolution becomes this huge
kind of chirotic moment where the actual

1181
01:22:15,640 --> 01:22:20,199
details and timelines about George Washington and
Benjamin Franklin and the founding fathers in July

1182
01:22:20,279 --> 01:22:24,840
to fourth and all that stuff is
less important than all of those things kind

1183
01:22:24,840 --> 01:22:28,720
of being gathered together in that particular
moment, it says nationalists were. Historiography

1184
01:22:28,760 --> 01:22:30,920
is full of such moments, but
what has changed is that around which these

1185
01:22:31,000 --> 01:22:38,720
moments gather. So in the pre
Bodered era, the organizing field for ordinary

1186
01:22:38,800 --> 01:22:43,920
time comes from these higher times.
So the higher times are basically two sources.

1187
01:22:44,760 --> 01:22:47,760
So if you think of ordinary time
as like secular time, I know

1188
01:22:47,840 --> 01:22:51,239
that the word secular can mean various
different things here, but for now we'll

1189
01:22:51,279 --> 01:22:56,159
just call it this sort of homogeneous
chronological time. There are kind of two

1190
01:22:56,199 --> 01:23:00,720
sources for that meeting. And what
is eternity, right, eternity sort of

1191
01:23:00,760 --> 01:23:04,840
breaking into ordinary time. And then
the other is what Taylor calls like the

1192
01:23:04,960 --> 01:23:10,239
Great Time. Right, this is
this is like say, like mythical time.

1193
01:23:10,319 --> 01:23:12,680
This is like when all the important
stuff happened to make the way the

1194
01:23:12,760 --> 01:23:16,039
world that it is today. Right. So if you're you know, living

1195
01:23:16,079 --> 01:23:20,920
in like a pre like like a
stoneyache civilization or something, the great time

1196
01:23:21,039 --> 01:23:25,319
is like when the gods were on
earth walking around and immortals. Right.

1197
01:23:25,359 --> 01:23:29,920
You know, for the Christian story, the great time is really the gospel,

1198
01:23:30,319 --> 01:23:31,880
right, the gospels from Christ was
here on earth, right when he's

1199
01:23:31,920 --> 01:23:41,079
establishing these things. And there's this
idea that Taylor really develops the way that

1200
01:23:41,199 --> 01:23:45,199
you have the horizontal dimension of secular
time, but also these vertical dimensions where

1201
01:23:45,560 --> 01:23:51,960
eternity and where and then or the
great time kind of break into that secular

1202
01:23:53,039 --> 01:23:57,359
time. And you could say,
like the more pronounced that happens, the

1203
01:23:57,439 --> 01:24:02,960
bigger the not becomes. And this
is what makes UH these relationships. And

1204
01:24:03,079 --> 01:24:09,560
it's really a three way relationship between
homogeneous time and UH and you know,

1205
01:24:09,760 --> 01:24:14,239
like our mythical history and then eternity. The more relationships there are, the

1206
01:24:14,279 --> 01:24:16,800
bigger than that becomes. And this
is actually what gives time me. And

1207
01:24:17,319 --> 01:24:21,760
there's a famous line in Hamlet and
I'm still waiting for all the symbolic real

1208
01:24:21,840 --> 01:24:28,520
people to have like the big Hamlet
moment. So maybe it'll happen. Because

1209
01:24:28,560 --> 01:24:31,399
Hamlet is a tremendously important, one
of Shakespeare's most important place. It's mentally

1210
01:24:31,399 --> 01:24:35,880
important work of literature because it's it's
one of the things that Hamlet is grappling

1211
01:24:35,960 --> 01:24:44,000
with, is the is the sort
of the great disenchantment and the passover from

1212
01:24:44,159 --> 01:24:47,720
the ancient world into the modern.
Right. It's it's not for nothing that

1213
01:24:49,119 --> 01:24:55,199
that Hamlet has just come from you
know, university, you know in Germany

1214
01:24:55,479 --> 01:25:00,119
at the birthplace of the Reformation.
These just come from university in jur and

1215
01:25:00,159 --> 01:25:03,279
many at their birth birthplace of modernity. Right. He's coming back and he's

1216
01:25:03,279 --> 01:25:08,399
trying to apply these modern understandings to
this, these encounters with the world that

1217
01:25:08,479 --> 01:25:12,079
are just wild and insane. His
father is a ghost, and his mother,

1218
01:25:12,359 --> 01:25:14,760
you know, and and a big
cuckle that like all these things,

1219
01:25:15,680 --> 01:25:18,680
and Halett eventually goes insane like trying
to kind of keep it all together,

1220
01:25:19,880 --> 01:25:23,159
you know, and you know,
get stabbed and a deal and everything else

1221
01:25:23,199 --> 01:25:26,159
as well. But but I mean
the kind of the point, you know,

1222
01:25:27,079 --> 01:25:29,680
this is one of the big things
that the play is wrestling with.

1223
01:25:30,680 --> 01:25:34,680
And but there's this line in there
where he says the times are out joint,

1224
01:25:35,800 --> 01:25:38,680
the times are out of joint,
which has kind of become like a

1225
01:25:39,279 --> 01:25:43,239
like a phrase. But this is
what it means. It means that he's

1226
01:25:43,680 --> 01:25:48,520
he's he's he's not just saying the
condition of Danish society at this particular time

1227
01:25:48,640 --> 01:25:51,640
is lamentable. That's not what he
means. He means that things aren't fitting

1228
01:25:51,680 --> 01:25:57,039
together in the proper fashion anymore.
As they do in times which are closer

1229
01:25:57,119 --> 01:26:01,680
to those ordering paradigms of eternity at
the sacred time, and it's it's interesting.

1230
01:26:01,800 --> 01:26:08,439
This comes relatively soon after he's having
a discussion with Marcella's and Marcella says,

1231
01:26:08,560 --> 01:26:12,359
you know that ghosts of goblins don't
dare walk the earth on Christmas Eve.

1232
01:26:12,520 --> 01:26:15,239
You know, I'm so hallid and
so gracious as the time, which,

1233
01:26:15,359 --> 01:26:17,560
by the way, you know this
is Hamlet a Christmas story. Well,

1234
01:26:17,680 --> 01:26:20,720
Diehard is a Christmas story. Hamlet
is definitely a Christmas story. But

1235
01:26:21,199 --> 01:26:26,880
anyway, so the thing with Christmas
is that it's one of these moments,

1236
01:26:26,920 --> 01:26:32,079
and the other moment really is the
Crucifixion, which is something that Taylor also

1237
01:26:32,119 --> 01:26:40,720
identifies that the Crucifixion and Christmas are
these two moments where there's a complete like

1238
01:26:41,079 --> 01:26:44,840
like the relationships that kind of keep
all of these things related to each other

1239
01:26:44,880 --> 01:26:48,159
are like the most complete, right, the symbolism matches up the most right,

1240
01:26:48,399 --> 01:26:54,920
you could say. And because of
that, these moments become extremely sticky,

1241
01:26:55,000 --> 01:27:00,600
or the knots become like really really
tangled, and and it becomes almost

1242
01:27:00,800 --> 01:27:05,560
impossible, becomes almost impossible to disentangle
those things and so what people try to

1243
01:27:05,640 --> 01:27:10,199
do is sort of cut the gority
and not and just like cut right through

1244
01:27:10,239 --> 01:27:15,640
it and say no more Christmas.
Right, But Christmas has this tremendous regenerative

1245
01:27:15,760 --> 01:27:19,399
quality to it. And I think
it's because it's the moment when it's the

1246
01:27:19,439 --> 01:27:26,520
moment when the great time and eternity
and chronological time. I mean, it's

1247
01:27:26,600 --> 01:27:30,279
really important that Christ was born in
Bethlehem. We know more or less the

1248
01:27:30,399 --> 01:27:32,239
day, we know more or less
the year, but it's really important that

1249
01:27:32,680 --> 01:27:38,279
God enters history because the other option
is that you have with the situation that

1250
01:27:38,319 --> 01:27:43,000
the Greeks had, which would be
chronological time and then eternity like the world

1251
01:27:43,039 --> 01:27:45,279
of ideas, and that there's nothing, there's nothing to kind of bridge the

1252
01:27:45,279 --> 01:27:48,399
gap between them. So what they
end up coming up with is the idea

1253
01:27:48,439 --> 01:27:55,680
of time as being sort of Sempi
turtle, which is constantly constantly progressing basically

1254
01:27:55,760 --> 01:27:59,600
time with no beginning or no end, right, like always change but never

1255
01:27:59,760 --> 01:28:02,920
full film it. Right. And
but in Christmas we get this, we

1256
01:28:03,039 --> 01:28:06,319
get this, this fulfillment of all
of these things, and at all of

1257
01:28:06,399 --> 01:28:11,000
the sort of the vertical and the
horizontal dimensions of time come together in this

1258
01:28:11,199 --> 01:28:15,159
work. Yeah, yeah, which
is here is in the story itself we

1259
01:28:15,279 --> 01:28:16,720
meant to Obviously we don't want to
go through all the Christmas symbolism, but

1260
01:28:17,239 --> 01:28:21,720
there it is the tree with the
with the activity set, you know,

1261
01:28:21,840 --> 01:28:26,600
at the at the bottom of the
manger, whether it is the angels singing

1262
01:28:26,720 --> 01:28:30,159
down to the shepherd's you know they're
they're just countless, or it is these

1263
01:28:30,640 --> 01:28:33,600
these wise men that come from Afar, like, all of the symbolism of

1264
01:28:33,680 --> 01:28:39,840
Christmas is about this intersection in the
story itself, not even accounting for what

1265
01:28:39,960 --> 01:28:43,680
it is, what it's actually doing
for us at that moment. So this

1266
01:28:43,840 --> 01:28:46,119
is my just to wrap this up. This is my argument for why you

1267
01:28:46,479 --> 01:28:58,239
have to celebrate Christmas. Right,
It's not just enough to believe that the

1268
01:28:58,800 --> 01:29:02,039
child born of a virgin was the
logos from before the ages. Right.

1269
01:29:02,319 --> 01:29:08,479
We can say we believe that all
we want to, but if we don't

1270
01:29:09,239 --> 01:29:13,199
act on that information some way and
the way that you act on this information,

1271
01:29:13,359 --> 01:29:18,239
the Taylor referre talked about liturgy and
like the idea. Let's say you

1272
01:29:18,279 --> 01:29:21,199
talked about the feast, the act
of celebration as being like a song.

1273
01:29:21,399 --> 01:29:25,479
Right, so the song has a
melody like a think of like a little

1274
01:29:25,520 --> 01:29:29,079
melody has sequential moments, you know, all these different notes and everything,

1275
01:29:29,560 --> 01:29:31,920
but really the beginning to the end
of that song all happened at the same

1276
01:29:32,000 --> 01:29:35,560
moment because it's a unit. Right, So if you don't sing the song,

1277
01:29:36,399 --> 01:29:40,640
then you're not actually you have no
way of participating in it in that

1278
01:29:40,760 --> 01:29:44,359
moment. The moment just passes you
by. Right, And if you don't

1279
01:29:44,479 --> 01:29:47,840
celebrate Christmas, then the moment,
this holy moment, right, this moment

1280
01:29:47,880 --> 01:29:53,000
with Heaven and Earth everything comes together
into this point, right, that moment

1281
01:29:53,159 --> 01:29:57,560
just passes you by, and pretty
soon you stop believing at all, right,

1282
01:29:57,600 --> 01:30:00,640
you stop really thinking. I mean, you know, there's there are

1283
01:30:00,720 --> 01:30:04,239
certain organizations that will do like polls
to see like what's the state of belief?

1284
01:30:04,800 --> 01:30:09,039
You know, and like year after
year if you look at this,

1285
01:30:09,600 --> 01:30:15,359
one of the questions on there is
is a true or false Jesus Christ is

1286
01:30:15,399 --> 01:30:20,119
the greatest being ever created by God, right and so and that's it's one

1287
01:30:20,119 --> 01:30:25,119
of the questions on the survey and
hor question every well, yeah, it's

1288
01:30:25,319 --> 01:30:28,680
it's definitely a leading question, right. But the question, yeah, but

1289
01:30:28,800 --> 01:30:31,800
what happens is that every year or
every four years when they do the survey,

1290
01:30:32,279 --> 01:30:35,600
that number goes up by ten or
fifteen percent. Yeah, right,

1291
01:30:35,760 --> 01:30:41,880
where people are just sort of like
sliding into arianism. Right, And you

1292
01:30:41,920 --> 01:30:45,600
know, there's a lot that could
be said about the state of catechesis and

1293
01:30:45,159 --> 01:30:48,359
theological education in churches in America's day, et cetera, et cetera. But

1294
01:30:48,600 --> 01:30:54,079
really the thing that we need to
do is not just put Christ back on

1295
01:30:54,159 --> 01:30:57,319
Christmas, but put the mass back
in Christmas right, to really keep the

1296
01:30:57,399 --> 01:30:59,960
feast, to keep the celebration,
and you can keep it at every sing

1297
01:31:00,039 --> 01:31:01,560
go one of these dimensions. You
can go to church and contemplate the mystery.

1298
01:31:01,880 --> 01:31:05,359
You can wake your neighbors up,
you know, at nine o'clock at

1299
01:31:05,439 --> 01:31:08,960
night and seeing seeing them songs and
offer them booze. Like, you can

1300
01:31:09,000 --> 01:31:11,680
do all of this stuff, right. You can participate in all of these

1301
01:31:11,720 --> 01:31:15,640
dimensions, and if you do,
you'll be more of a human being than

1302
01:31:15,680 --> 01:31:17,640
you were. But if you do, you will also be able to draw

1303
01:31:17,680 --> 01:31:20,880
closer to Christ and closer to your
neighbor. Right, And that actually,

1304
01:31:20,960 --> 01:31:27,680
without these things, what ends up
happening is that time just becomes Does anybody

1305
01:31:27,760 --> 01:31:31,520
remember COVID? Right, with all
the celebrations taken away like like what happened

1306
01:31:31,560 --> 01:31:35,640
time, what happened during COVID exactly, time just becomes this long kind of

1307
01:31:36,000 --> 01:31:43,560
like like undifferentiated linear. Yeah,
you know, passage and and nothing there,

1308
01:31:43,720 --> 01:31:45,399
and there's no memory, right,
there's no memory, there's no participation.

1309
01:31:45,600 --> 01:31:49,720
So that's the MIDWD explanation. The
easy one is it's Jesus birthday.

1310
01:31:50,279 --> 01:31:55,800
Why wouldn't you celebrate it? So
all right, Richard, that's great,

1311
01:31:55,960 --> 01:31:59,720
Thank you so much, And don't
forget everybody, by the way, that

1312
01:32:00,079 --> 01:32:01,960
Richard will be there at the Symbolic
World summit. So if you want to

1313
01:32:02,000 --> 01:32:06,000
have so many crazy things planned from
the Universal History panel, I mean,

1314
01:32:06,039 --> 01:32:10,840
I'm really gonna I'm going to really
like just not restrain myself even a little

1315
01:32:10,840 --> 01:32:14,319
bit. We're gonna get this really
fun shared stuck. So so I can't

1316
01:32:14,439 --> 01:32:16,439
I definitely can't wait to everybody.
Thanks again, Richard. I wish you

1317
01:32:16,840 --> 01:32:20,560
a merry Christmas and uh likewise,
see you in the in the in the

1318
01:32:20,680 --> 01:32:26,279
new year. If you enjoyed these
videos and podcasts, please go to the

1319
01:32:26,319 --> 01:32:30,079
Symbolic World dot com website and see
how you can support what we're doing.

1320
01:32:30,439 --> 01:32:33,600
There are multiple subscriber tiers with perks. There are apparel and books to purchase,

1321
01:32:33,920 --> 01:32:38,279
So go to the Symbolic World dot
com and thank you for your support.

1322
01:32:38,960 --> 01:32:42,239
I want to invite you all to
the very first Symbolic World Summit.

1323
01:32:42,600 --> 01:32:45,319
Over three days, we will finally
meet in real time, in real space,

1324
01:32:45,399 --> 01:32:49,359
and everyone from this little corner of
the Internet will be there to explore

1325
01:32:49,439 --> 01:32:54,239
the theme of reclaiming the cosmic image. Of course I will be speaking,

1326
01:32:54,560 --> 01:32:58,239
but there will also be Martin Shaw, who is an amazing mythographer, father

1327
01:32:58,399 --> 01:33:02,079
Stephen de Youong of Lords Spirit Fame. There will be Richard Rowland from the

1328
01:33:02,159 --> 01:33:08,079
Universal History series, Vesper stamper Nicholas
Kotar, and Neil de Gray that you've

1329
01:33:08,119 --> 01:33:13,000
all seen on my channel here and
there for entertainment, we have everyone's favorite

1330
01:33:13,039 --> 01:33:16,920
apocalyptic band, the One and Only
Dirt Poor Robbins. This event will be

1331
01:33:16,960 --> 01:33:21,720
the chance of a lifetime to capture
and embrace our current moment. So join

1332
01:33:21,840 --> 01:33:27,399
us from February twenty ninth to March
second, twenty twenty four in Tarbinspings,

1333
01:33:27,439 --> 01:33:31,880
Florida. Visit the Symbolic World dot
com slash summit for more information and I

1334
01:33:32,000 --> 01:33:36,920
will see you there. So much
planing and