You have to celebrate Christmas. It's not just enough to believe that this child
born of a virgin was the logos from before the ages. Right, we
can say we believe that all we want to, but if we don't act
on that information some way. And the way that you act on this information
Taylor referred talks about liturgy and like, let's say you talked about the feast,
the act of celebration as being like a song. Right, So the
song has a melody like a think of like a little melody, has sequential
moments, you know, all these different notes and everything, but really the
beginning to the end of that song all happened at the same moment because it's
a unit. So if you don't sing the song, then you're not Actually
you have no way of participating in it in that moment. And if you
don't celebrate Christmas, then the moment, this holy moment, right, this
moment with Heaven and Earth everything comes together into this point, right, that
moment just passes you by and pretty soon you stop believing at all. This
is Jonathan Peshel Welcome to the symbolic world. So hello everyone, I am
back here with Richard Roland for another episode of Universal History. As all of
you know, Richard and I wrapped up a major course on be Wolf where
Richard took us through very convincingly why bey Wolf is a Christian poem, and
if you watch it, you'll see at the end, I myself have a
like a mouth of Gaate like he just at the end of you. There's
no doubt it just like all comes together. It's very beautiful. So you
can still check that out. By the way, if you're interested, the
course is gonna stay on for sale on the website, so you can check
that out. But today we are going to talk about Christmas, about the
kind of how Christmas came together as a peace in the church, why it's
so important, you know, why we celebrate Christmas the way we do today,
and so it's gonna be it's going to be a great episode. Thanks
for coming on, Richard. Glad to be here. This is one of
my personal like hobby horses, is defending Christmas. I'm a I'm a I'm
a staunch veteran of the Christmas Wars. For a little context about this,
maybe some people remember if you were if you are like a fundamentalist Protestant,
especially living in the South, like the Southern US. I like, I
like how Americans we say thus South as this is the only South. But
I guess, I guess people say that everywhere. But anyway, but if
you're living in the southern US, you might have been familiar, like you
might have grown up in like the worship wars wars. So the Worship Wars
was like the big kind of like maybe you have those other places too.
I just didn't grow up there where, you know. It was like do
we do like a praise band or a piano in hymns or like a piano
and organ ors? You know, this kind of debate about this kind of
stuff. Like my family was in the trenches of all that stuff when I
was a kid, but then as I grew up and eventually, you know,
it was on past oral staff for several years. One day, one
day somebody came to me very upset and said, well, somebody has put
up a Christmas tree in the like the fourier of the church. And I
was like, well, it's it's December, so we we do that every
year, and h it kind of I was. I was totally flabbergasted,
you could say, like like very caught off guard, why would this be
a problem. And but that kind of that kind of initiated a multi year
I don't say struggle, but but a period that I sometimes kind of refer
to my wife and I refer to as the Christmas Wars, which had to
do with which had to do with some people, not all just at that
church, but just like in our lives, et cetera, really really going
hard trying to get people to stop celebrating Christmas. And it's the usual sort
of stuff. It's a it's a pig of a holiday, it's a it's
too Catholic, et cetera, et cetera. And so that is one of
the things that caused me to like really dig my heels in and start studying.
Actually that was right before I started working on what eventually became a master's
and essentially medieval literature. But it caused me to, yeah, like that
was one of the things that got me to start like really did my heels
in and be like, all right, well, if this is really a
Roman Catholic thing, then gosh started I'm going to understand why, you know,
you know, as opposed to just say, oh, well that's Catholic.
So toss that, so it's it's a weird it's a weird thing.
Like studying and sort of fighting for the celebration of Christmas is actually probably why
I'm orthodox interesting in a weird way. That's like a part of my story
that I don't think i've I've ever shared before publicly, but but you know,
that's one of the things that got me to, you know, really
think about what it means to have tradition, of what it means to celebrate
and there's a part of there was a part of my conversion experience that was
certainly intellectual, right, but the much more important part was as we were
converting as a family, especially for my wife, was the embodied part of
it. And for us actually really deciding we need to take not just Christmas,
but like advents seriously and do these certain things. And then later on
Lent and Easter, like deciding that we needed to find some way to make
these times kind of special as a family and start participating in the cinema embodied
way was a really important turning point for our family. It's interesting. I
just want to say something what you said. It's interesting because this holiday war
that we see, it's a strange place where secular atheist types and fundamentalists hold
hands in their arguments. And to be fair, not all fundamentalists, because
again the family that I grew up in super big, but like some fundamentalist
really very particularly strained of fundamentalists. Like I know a lot of people that
were in that camp, like an anti Christmas camp when I was younger.
They ended up moving towards Jewish holidays. Ultimately. Yeah, yeah, that's
one of the things we'll talk about a little bit later. And actually for
people who want to go back to last year's video, last year we did
a video was a sequel to the Groundhog Day video where we looked at the
four winter feasts, of the four great winter Feasts of the Church. I
kind of talked about how those are fulfillments of Hanukkah, of the festival of
the rededication of the Temple, and the rededication of the Temple of the Cosmos.
I'm not going to repeat myself on a lot of that stuff today because
watch it. People can go back and watch that. But so all this
to say, this is like a it's a very you know, passionate subject
for me. So I'm excited to talk about it today. So we're gonna
do this in two parts. I want to talk about a little bit about
how we got to have the kind of Christmas celebration that we have today,
which is which is understanding that everybody, you know, different families do things
a little bit differently. Broadly speaking, there are certain things which if you
live in North America and you celebrate Christmas, there's certain things that you're you're
doing that you're you're doing, and you're doing them every year. Even if
you're not doing them. You know some of them specifically, they're all around
you. They're in all of the Christmas movies, They're in all of the
like the the you know, you can't get away from it, the grocery
store, the uh, the home improvement store, the mall, like all
these things, right, you can't. There's certain things you can't get away
from. So I want to kind of talk about how we got to that
Christmas yeah and uh and then also look at some of the historical attempts to
abolish Christmas and uh and what. And then basically the second half of the
view was talking about why that has it work? Why is sticky? Is
Christmas so sticky that we can't seem to help ourselves when it comes to celebrating
it. So that's where we're going to go, all right, So I
want to be again with just talking about the essence of the feasts. This
is you know, in some respects the most obvious part, and yet it's
so it's it's weird because it's so obvious, like we constantly feel like every
year, I mean, you know, six of my neighbors right now have
a have a put you know, keep christ in Christmas kind of a thing
out in their yard with a Nativity scene and stuff. And it's great.
I love it, you know, I really love just all the statues of
Jesus and Mary everywhere this time of year. You know, it's great.
And now I really am serious about that. We'll come to that in a
little bit. But I think it is actually kind of this beautiful return to
tradition that you see happening, you know, even in you know, the
Deep South. So yeah, it's a it's an unconscious return to tradition,
you know, in very unsuspected place, and that has to do with that
stickiness that we're going to talk about. But but I just want to start
with like the fundamental essence of the feast, which I think will help us
understand why it is as sticky as it is. And that is it's the
it's the ultimate expression of the pattern of the high becoming low. Right.
And and I know this is a pattern you talk about a lot. People
who are we're talking about this the other day, right, people who are
like on this channel a lot, or in the various discussions around this part
of the internet think about this pattern a lot. But this is the ultimate
expression of this pattern, right, And it it what it does, is
it manifests this pattern, you could say, like more evocatively than almost anything
else except for the Crucifixion. Yeah, right, right, And so I
just want to read something real quick. This is from you know, uh,
this is from our festal hymns for the feasts and the Orthodox Church.
But this actually comes from this is just a setting into verse of a mostly
already metrical homily or oration that was given by Saint Gregory the Theologian on the
on the occasion of Theophany slash Nativity, which, as I'm going to it'splaining
in a moment used to be a celebrated on the same day. So this
it says Christ is born. Glorify him. Christ comes from Heaven. Go
to meet him. Christ is on earth, Be exalted. Seem to the
Lord all the earth, and praise him and gladness, o people, for
he has been glorified to the son begotten of the Father before all ages,
and incarnate of the version without seed in these latter days, to Christ,
our God. Let us cry out, you have raised up our horn.
Holy are you, o Lord stam and flower of the root of Jesse.
You have blossomed from the Virgin, O Christ, from the mountain overshadowed by
the forest. That's an image from the song with Tobacco, which the Church
traditionally ascribes to the Virgin Mary. From the mountain, overshadowed by the forest.
You have come made flesh from her who knew no man, Oh,
God, not formed from matter. Glory to your power, O Lord.
I behold a strange, most glorious mystery heaven, the cave, the Druvik
throne, the Virgin, the manger, a place where Christ lay, the
uncontainable God whom we magnify in song. So this is like the really the
key kind of the center of our celebration, and it comes from a much
longer oration that Saint Gregory gave on this feast, and he talks about a
lot of things that are I really encourage people to go and read this.
You can find it in his festal Orations. The excerpt that was just reading
there comes from a book called The Winter Pasca, which is just a really
great kind of a reader written by Father Thomas Howko back in the day on
the various feasts of the winter season. And in each these chapter is like
maybe two or three pages, and there's forty of them, so yeah,
it's just a really lovely little reader. But he talks about a lot of
pins. He talks about, actually, how should we celebrate the feast?
Don't celebrate it like the Pagans, that is, with drunkenness. We're going
to talk about drunkenness specifically today because it comes up a lot, as it
happens in talking about the historical celebrations of Christmas, but not to celebrate it
as Pagans, but instead of celebrate it soberly as Christians, by which of
course Saint Gregory means go to church, feed the poor, right and and
then you know, yeah, enjoy yourself as well, but don't uh you
know, don't engage in the kind of revel rates the Pagans engage in.
And there's a lot of beautiful themes in this homily, right, the high
becoming the lowest thing. I mean, there's nothing weaker or less, uh,
less powerful than a Jewish baby in the you know, in the Roman
Empire. Right, you know this, you don't get any weaker, any
poorer, any less significant than that, right. Uh. The on the
one of the other major images that we find in the ancient hymns, both
in the East end of the West, is the the uncontainable, the idea
of the something that can't be contained being contained right in the Virgin in a
major and so on. And then of course you know, for us as
Christians, the deep significance which you'll find many of the True Father's talking about
a Christ of being laid in a food trough, right as as you know,
like this is I mean, it's very very sort of evident eucharistic imagery,
right, foreshadowing foreshadowing that. So and the images like really images of
the of the tent, of the of the arc of the covenant. There
in that that TEXTI wrote, like between the Cherubim and everything, like,
yes, understanding that there there's a relationship between the glory of God descending in
the temple and Christ being born out of the Virgin, right, pretty yeah,
yeah, this is really important. I mean, this is the the
I mean, like the most common Orthodox hymn about the Theotokus is like the
more honorable in the Cherubim. Right. Well to that to understand why that's
not just a nice thing that we say because we like Mary, Right,
you really have to look at hymns like this hymn of the feast right where
we're saying, right, the Virgin becomes the cherubc throne. Right, So
like the Cherubim, they carry the throne. Well, but she's the throne,
right, And that's why she's more honorable than them, right, because
she's the throne now, and she becomes the throne in like the most like
earthy literal way possible because she's the baby is sitting at her lap. Right.
This is one of the earliest images that we have of the Virgin from
the catacombs in Rome. Is this is the adoration of the magi, right,
and which is the which was originally, by the way, was originally
the focus of the Christmas celebration in the West, we'll talk about we'll talk
about how how Christmas gets some kind of split out from Theophony and epiphety in
just a second. And then, of course, one of the other major
themes, and again I just said, if people come back and watch that
video we did last year, one of the major themes here is the idea
of the restoration of the Temple of the Cosmos, right, and it's it's
sort of linked its ties to the Old Testament feast of the Restoration or the
festival of lights with nowadays is called Hanuka. So so that being said,
let me talk about the Christian and Medieval celebrations of the peace. So originally
Christmas and Theophany or Christmas at Epiphany fifty in the West, Theophany in the
East. They have different emphasies, but they're the same feast. And I'm
just going to probably call it seophony the rest of our conversation, but I'm
really including both. I mean, the differentiation of emphasis is very ancient,
as you know. So Theophany focused mainly on the baptism of Christ, fifty
focused mainly on the otoration of the magi. Yeah, but it was also
like I think that the idea of the early feast was something like the feast
of the revelation of Light. That's right, that's right. I mean that's
the earliest, that's the earliest thing light. It's the feast of Light,
right, the festival of Light and of Chris. When Saint Gregory is is
is delivering that festal oration, that's the occasion on what she's doing it,
Yeah, which is why like there's all while those images come together, right
the moment when Christ is first recognized in the world, So the magi,
the the the baptism, but then also like the wedding of kind of for
example, would be mentioned in those early feasts, and so like all these
moments before Christ revealed themselves fully the glibber of light appearing in the incarnation really
like everything culminating up to the baptism, right, that the whole kind of
episode, which is where two of the gospels start, right, two of
the gospels just begin of the baptism, which is an important detail. So
yeah, so originally this is all kind of one feasts and actually in ar
media and Christianity is still celebrated this way, right, all on one single
feast. What happens beginning in the mid fourth century is that the celebration of
Christmas gets to sort of split out out from Epiphany Theophony into two feasts which
are twelve days apart. And the reason for this is basically arianism. So
arianism is the it's these sort of you know, the archeresey as far as
Christians are concerned, right, it's this teaching that the Son was a creature,
that he was not eternally begotten. It does not necessarily the teaching that
Jesus wasn't God, or Jesus wasn't divine, which is how some people will
try to explain it sometimes because areas actually believe Jesus was divine. He just
believed he was like a divine created thing like like like like like right,
a God right, And of course this creates you know, polytheism and various
other problems for Christian theology. One of the permutations of arianism is something called
a pollinarianism, which is basically this idea that and there there are a few
different versions of this, right, but it's basically the idea that Jesus is
just like a normal good person. And then at some point and most people
who believe the set at the baptism, the Logos comes in and fills him,
right, yeah, sometimes yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
And a lot of these things, I mean there was like adoptionism and the
Aridism and the pollinarianism and a lot but I mean a lot of these things
like intersect so much it's not totally important for our purposes today to like go
south the individual. The most important to say that, what was what became
important for the Christians was to say that the incarnate Logos was incarnate from the
moment of conception, not at not at some later point during this right.
So that's exactly how this becomes. You know, if you go back and
look at those those hymns that I just read, right, there's this talking
about how the whole focus is on how Christ that is born in the manger
as being adored by the Magi, right, is already gone before the agent
worthy of our adoration. Right. And in this context the gifts of the
Magi, which is the big focus of Epiphany in the West, becomes emblematic,
becomes the emblematic active worship. Right. This this for the total giving
of ourselves, right, where we have nothing to give to Christ but ourselves.
And I'll just say on this note, there's a really wonderful series of
like Prince. I think they were done as originally is like postcards by an
our New Boo artist name. I think it's Etzio A Nikini and I probably
got his name wrong, but he was an Italian artist and he did a
series of of He did a series of like sort of postcard prints. Well,
I'll send it to Lisa Leaders who can put up on the screen.
Did a series of postcard prints of like the various titles of the Virgin,
one of them for the Mater Christi, the Mother of Christ. He did
the he does the adoration of the Magi, and it's one of my favorite
images of the adoration of the Magi because one of the things they have them
doing is taking the the incense. You know, so you got the three
gifts gold frankincense, and Myrrh right was taking the frankincense and burning it in
a censor before the Christ Child. And I don't know why I never thought
about that before I saw that image, But of course, I mean,
if you believe this is this is God before the what do you do you?
What do you do when you come to God or even like an emperor
for that matter, right, you burn incense. Right, it's an active
worship and active veneration, and so it's anyway, it's a really beautiful image
and very evocative in that sense. Right, So this is the big focus
of Christmas, right by celebrating it. We're gonna talk at the end of
the video today about the importance of celebrating something. Why it's actually not enough
to just think something, correct, but you actually have to celebrate it.
You have to embody it in some way, right, which, by the
way, is something that everybody knows, right, even the sort of like
the the the anti culture right knows this, right, And that's why you
have to have prima. And that's why you have to have celebrations. It's
not just remove celebration, you have to rebrace them with something that right exactly.
Yeah, So what happens pretty quickly is is that we start preparing for
this great feast with a period of preparation. And so in the West,
this used to begin back on November the eleventh. In the is on November
of fifteenth. Either way, it's sort of a forty day fast. In
the West, it was called Saint Martin's Lent because it originated in the Diocese
of Tours in France. So if you came to the Bailwolf class, you
will know I made a lot of jokes at the expense of the French.
But today I have only good things to say about the French. So so,
yeah, well, it is Christmas, Jonathan, it is Christmas.
That's right. Yeah, I'm gonna have good things to say about Martin Luther
as well, So there you go. Yeah. So, so if you
go back and look at the sixth century councils in the West, starting in
France, the Council of Tours and then kind of spreading around there, it
establishes Advent and Christmas tide as separate seasons. And it seems like this was
because people have started to like pre celebrate a little too much, right,
which is the thing we do in our culture. Now. We're like,
well, Christmas on the twenty fifth, that we've got to get all of
the Christmas parties, the work Christmas party, and the gym Christmas all in
before Christmas. You got to get all in before Christmas. Right, Well,
this is apparently a very old problem, and so and so what they
did is they established they established these fast as a way of making sure we're
preparing properly, and then also established Christmas Tide, the time from Christmas to
a pipe with they offer as being as being a time of feasting, right,
and so this is kind of how it takes the general shape that it
does. So for instance, the current Advent season in the West, which
doesn't start and if everybody eleven starts on December the first, or like the
first Sunday around there. That dates back to the late sixth century when months
were required to fast for the first twenty four days of December, and it
seems like this was because they had been breaking into the Christmas Ao a little
bit early. That's right. Yeah, they had their Advent calendar now that
just has chocolate in it, like Foo eat chocolate. I like the ones
that have just like a little sing of a different Scotch whiskey in each of
the doors you go. Unfortunately I can't participate in these, but I think
it's a neat idea. So so there's a basic rule of thumb for understanding
why different cultures have different Christmas traditions, and that is the colder your winter
is the bigger deal Christmas is in your culture, right, And that's that's
more or less true across the board. There's some exceptions to it. But
but put it another way, the colder your winter is, the more Christmas
customs and traditions your culture will develop, and like the stickier those things will
be. Yeah, And because it's darker too, right, you have that
sense of this dark moment when the into which Christ is born. And I've
heard some people say something like sometimes well the Orthodox are really going to celebrate
Paska, they just don't know how celebrate Christmas or something like this. But
like, go to Ukraine, go to Russia, go to any of those
like northern European countries where it gets very cold, very dark, right,
go to even like Serbia and the Balkans. You'll find all kinds of amazing
Christmas carols, Christmas tradition, stuff you've never heard of, stuff that's really
similar to stuff it grew up with. So it really has a lot to
do with the weather and particularly, like you said, the amount of darkness
that you have. And I'll say a little bit here about the connections between
and we said a lot more about this in our last video. So again
go back and watch that people in the Groundhog Day video as well. But
the connections between the connections between like pagan solstice celebrations and this is the thing
that everybody has a winter festival. Absolutely, if you have a winter,
you have a winter festivals. Right, And I realized I'm talking kind of
mainly about the northern hemisphere right now. I don't know what to do about
that, but you know we can. Yeah, it's sorry. People in
Australia, like I don't, I don't know what to say, but or
in South Africa, South Africa, or yeah, yeah, yeah, right
right, But basically, like as at the light receiving, right, you
get to the deepest, darkest part of the year, and everybody has this
deep cultural it's sort of deeper than cultural actually, like this really primitive sense
that a festival was needed, that light is needed, right, Yeah,
we have to light a bond fire. We have to light we have to
light the right, Like it's just inevitable to think that way. Yeah,
I have to find the light at least, we have to like get some
hope for the sun to come back. And this seems to be the main
reason for people rejecting the idea that Chris that Christ might have actually been born
on December the twenty fifth, because it makes so much sense, because it
makes too much sense, Like that's too perfect, that goes together too well,
right, I would just say, like, you know, you know
who made the agricultural cycle, who made the seasons? Right? And and
so for me, it's it's just this is when light would come into the
world. What else would it have happened? Right? When else would it
have happened? And so a lot of so all this to say, if
somebody says to me such and such Christmas tradition, you know, like the
Christmas ham or something like this that goes back to this old Germanic pagan custom
at your or something like this, okay, all right, but you come
over for dinner or what like, you know, let's you know, yeah,
that's that And really that should not be a problem for us if you
understand the way that these things work, right and uh oh, so a
lot of the traditions that we associate with Christmas had already started developing by the
late Middle Ages. One of my favorite tier is Carolyn Right. Uh and
and here I have to say something which may upset some people. But I
don't mean to all right, and that is that a carol, isn't it
not the same thing as a himen. Yeah, nowadays, in like modern
English Parlamce, when somebody says at Christmas carol, they just mean a religious
song that you sing at Christmas time, right, or as a semi religious
song you sing at Christmas time. It's just like a Christmas song, that's
what we mean by Christmas carol. But carols are not the same things as
as hymns. And in fact, carols were not sung in church until about
the later half of the nineteenth century. Really, yeah, not sung and
carolyn not to be stung in church. Yeah, yeah, they're not liturgical.
They're not liturgical, and you've got to sort of think about so actually,
sometimes you'll find medieval bishops writing against the practice of caroling. This is
a little funny to think about because I know that, you know, some
traditions really love their like lessons and Carol's service on Christmas Eve, which I
think is awesome quite frankly, and I'm not going to stop, you know,
I'm not telling anybody stop doing that. But it's quite funny to realize
that there are lots of medieval bishops, you know in France and England and
other places writing against the practice of caroling. Well, why are they writing
against the practice of carolyn? Because caroling is uh, it's a it's a
sort of a it's a carnival practice. Right. You're going around from house
to house, and you're usually going with a keg or like a large bowl
of very alcoholic punch, and you come up to the door of the place
and you sing, and then you offer the people at the house, you
offer them a drink in exchange for like a gift of some kind. And
yeah, this is caroling, and which, by the way, sounds like
a great time. We try to do caroling every year st around our neighborhood.
And and but I've never like been like, hab a sit from the
flask as well, neighbor light. Maybe I need to bring that in,
But no to make you more popular, yeah yeah, yeah, or less
popular, depending on English neighbor ending on which yeah. Yeah. But anyway,
my point is that that that all of that sounds awesome, okay,
but this actually helps explain the kind of the character of Christmas carols. Like
if you go back and look at some really old medieval Christmas carols, especially
like medieval English carols, which is most of us know. Sometimes they're uh
there, let's let's put it this way. They're not usually theologically explicit.
Yeah, there a lot of times they'll have be something like I saw three
ships on Christmas Day or something like this, and there's a lot of metaphor,
and it's the way you think of it as a sort of a lyrical
veil over the mystery. Yeah, and why is the mystery veiled in this
way? Well, it's because it's because we're not in church, right,
and we're going around town and we're slightly drunk at this point. And also
some of the things that they sang along with Christmas carols in the same setting,
we're drinking songs. Yeah, how much trouble? How much trouble am
I allowed to get into trouble? Is okay? So I'll just say that
there is a h there's a collection, like a fifteenth century manuscript that collects
a bunch of Christmas carols and including one of my favorite medieval carols, which
is called Adam Leigh bound In. We'll talk about that in a second.
But it all also has like songs about somebody's male member, the lyrics at
which are are quite hilarious actually, And and the thing you have to understand
is they're going from house to house and you're getting songs about like the Fall
and Original Sin and baby Juice is a Manger and then also here's here's a
funny you know, body humor, like yeah, like yeah, here's a
dirty sung right that. That's that's how carol's were used. That's what caroling
is. This is this is the uh, those are the only two registers
anybody has in the Middle Ages. You're either like pousplating the mystery or it's
body humor, and those are the two, like there's nothing in between.
When would they carol? Like when would date? What days? Do you
know? Well, so, the the thing that the church really try to
enforce is caroling doesn't start until Christmas night, okay, yeah, Christmas night
and then and then you you go you go around caroling after that. Of
course, eventually what happens is that the distinct which you would Advent and Christmas
Tide gets kind of lost, and that's how we get the situation that we
have today. But that doesn't really happen it'stil the nineteenth century. Yeah,
and then of course this culminates. Eventually Carrol's become a nostalgia thing. At
least the ones that aren't about yeah, yeah, forget it, but I
don't know them now, they will become the ones you hear at them.
And by the way, there were carols I'll just say, there were carols
for other holidays too. Yeah, some very famous, very famous, like
ash Wednesday carols, Good Friday carols, even one carol for the Circumcision of
the Lord that I that I managed to find. So there were, like
historically, there were other carols as well, but Christmas was like the main
time you went caroling. And it has to do with this, It has
to do with this, the winter of it all. Basically, right,
you need to drink It's like, yeah, you need to drink old and
it's dark. Yeah yeah. So we also get things like the Christmas boar.
There's actually a famous carol about this, the boars headed Christmas, which
is which I really love the use of, especially in Western Europe. The
use of evergreenery, you know, like garland holly, evergreens, you know,
fir trees, things like this. The use of this to sort of
like uh, sparse up the inside of the house, right with like lice
and evergreen, which is if there's any aesthetic which which is like identifiably Christmas,
it would be lots of lights and just evergreen things everywhere, right,
and again when most of the world is dead except for these particular plants.
Yeah, right, that it's very easy to see why why that would be
done. And it also winter berries, Like the idea of a winterberry is
really bortant with Christmas because it is light or that seed that's being preserved and
you can still identified even though everything else is dead. Yeah, now that's
u that's a beautiful way to say that. And even things like missiletoe,
which we we know like as modern people we know it to be a parasitic
fun guy, right, but fungus. But but for medieval people, the
missletoe had all these other connotations, right, you know the but also like
it's a little poisonous, so it's yeah, but it's it's it's one of
those interesting things. Go look at the way that mistletoe has used in medieval
symbolism. That's a subtle video, I think. But so you have you
have all those stuff that comes in another very important element that should not be
overlooked is the feasting of the poor. So this is a really important part
of actually any Christian celebration. If you if you want to be trad and
you want to go celebrate holidays in traditional ways, if you're not buying a
mule for somebody else, right, or or you know, get a case
of beer for the guy in the corner or something, you know, like
if you're not if you are not actually feasting the poor in some way,
then you are actually traditional celebrating traditionally. And so the way that it worked
in for instance, in Midie, England, is that there were certain days
of the year Easter, Saint John's Night, which is the summer solstice,
and then and Christmas at a specifically other days as well, but those three
days specifically when it was expected that the well to do members of the villager
of the town would put out a feast for all of the poor people,
right. And it's sort of like come and get as much as you want
of all the richest foods, right. And this is a really important part
of the celebration as well. And a lot of times when we talk we
think about like the social and version aspect of some of these holidays like the
Boy Bishop Feast or the Feast of the ass on January fourteenth. Right.
Obviously there they have a connotation of like misrule and things like this, and
those aspects were always always concerned for religious leaders, especially those of the more
sort of uptight variety. But also a part of the whole idea of inversion
is that poor people get to eat what the rich people have, and that's
actually a really important dynamic within Christianity and a really important dynamic within the traditional
observance of these feasts. Yeah, and that's still like today, we still
have of you know, the kind of Christmas uh you know what you say
it in English, but you know, like to gather around food for Christmas
like you go to for for people and making boxes for families that struggle and
stuff like. That's definitely still even in a secular world. It's I feel,
I think every truth that I've ever gone to as a member, both
as a Protestant now is worth an Execrition has done that for Christmas, and
even the grocery stores get in on it. You know. It was like
here's a bunch of conveniently packed bags of food. You can just buy one
and then we'll donate it to the shelter and things like that. So you
know, Uh, the rule about charity, there are two rules about charity.
Uh, since nobody asked. There are two rules about charity. One
is that the the the less Uh, the closer the proximity, the better.
Right. The more times my money changes hands, I'm not even talking
about like where is that money actually going? Because this doesn't actually seem to
be a question that we're supposed to ask as Christians. I mean, be
a little discerning about the charities you donate to. But Christ, you know,
Christ says to give to every man that asks to do right, so
not but what is he going to do with it later? But but anyway,
but the more the more times that that gift changes hands, right,
basically, the farther away I have to be from my neighbor to give to
him, right, let's say, like the less self iffic it is,
Right, it has a different effect on your soul if you are personally,
you know, giving something to somebody, You're looking somebody in the eye,
you're seeing them as a human being. Right, It's that's a very different
thing than I just I just gave some money to a to a charity online.
And now I'm covered. And I'm not saying don't give money to charities
online, like do what you can't do, what do what you can do,
but but but maybe don't don't underestimate the importance of And this is just
the real difference, you could say, like between religious charity and something like
government welfare, is that there is a sort of a depersonalization that goes on,
right, that makes it you know, never mind with the effect my
the other person who's on the receiving gun, right, but for the person
you know, Saint John christem lots of lots of famous homilies against you know,
wealth. Uh, there there are no warnings to the poor in the
Bible, you know. And but one of the things that he she you
know, to paraphrase, you know, I said, you know, what
are you saving up for? Hell? You know kind of you know that
kind of an idea. But yeah, but he talks a lot about this
and that says, you know, the poor man is there for your salvation,
right, you know, so you can't neglect him, right. So
this is the really important part of the celebration of this kind of feast.
And uh, it's also a very important part of understanding the symbolism of Christmas,
right, the highest thing becoming the lowest thing. Right, that inversion,
uh, which is which is at the heart of charitable giving works of
mercy, but is also at the heart of the parts of the feast that
make certain people it chy. Right, the the the inversion, the like
the social and versions and the and the revelry and things like this, that
all of that is actually part of that of the symbolism of the highest thing
becoming low. So uh. And then of course you know this inversion can
take darker aspects, right, drunkenness, gambling, et cetera. That's always
been a problem people, and and and you know, like, uh,
people in charge have always tried to sort of it. Yeah, sure,
right, always they got to figure out how to manage it, right.
So, and I just want to reiterate a lot of the things that we're
talking about here. You know, you could go back and look at like
Saturnalia as this time of inversion or or something like that. A lot of
things we're talking about here can just write, I think should be rightly understood
as integrations of pagan soulsice celebrations, and that should be fine right, if
we understand the way that Christianity works, the way that Christ works, the
significance that is coming into the world and the deeper winter, they should not
actually present us with the difficulty. Yeah, I mean, I mean think
about it like it's weird. Because also think about in the Middle Ages,
the bishop complaining that, you know, people in the town got too drunk,
instead of mentioning how they are massive orgies, you know, like right,
yeah, a kid like the saturnay. Everything's relative, That's right,
everything's relative. So you can actually see how Christianity transforms these types of feasts
to like to be able to give some room for a bit of messiness,
to like point it but then pointed towards towards a better path. You could
say, Yeah, I'm gonna talk a lot about Charles Taylor in the Second
is a secular age, but he talks about these kinds of carnival as being
like the idea of like if you have wine and a wine like wine aging
and old wine skin and you don't like unstop it every once in a while,
eventually it's gonna explode. Right, The gas is just gonna build up
and it's gonna explode. It's the same kind of a thing here, Like
you do have to have a little bit like like you shouldn't get drunk,
but then also there are times when people need to get drunk. Right,
those are like the two weird. Uh, that's the weird dichotomy that you
find even in scripture. Even in scripture you find this, right, you
know that there are in Leviticus, right, you know, there's a whole
like and if you can't go to the Jerusalem for this particular feast, then
take the money that you would have spent on the trip and throw a big
party for your friends at eat and be merry and get drunk before the Lord,
right, you know. And so so it's it's it's a weird it's
a weird plane of a thing. And I think I think that the the
balance the church has traditionally struck is that you always have you always have people
saying knock it off, you guys, and you always have people sort of
doing it anyway that seems to like that seems to like hit like a good
kind of flexibility. And this is really actually with this point is such a
great point that you're making. And it's one that that it's that people don't
understand how traditional societies work because we tend to or understand authority as always as
absolute authority that has absolute reach. And so when we know that, like
you can't cross a red light, we know that if you cross a red
light, then you'll get a ticket. You know, they'll they'llly take a
picture of your license plate and then you'll get a ticket by the mail or
whatever. And so. But in the traditional world, like you said,
it's actually a it's actually a dance, right, there's a dance, like
you said, between different factions that create this kind of balance and move that
doesn't always remain the same. It kind of moves sometimes. Maybe it'll be
moments where it's a bit more puritanical, sometimes we'll be a little more permissive,
and then it'll kind of slide back and forth between that. But that's
the dance between exactly that the balance is saying yeah, knock it off,
but then doing it to some extent. Anyways. Yeah, the kind of
people you always want to be careful of are the either like the Puritans or
like the total hedonists. Right, that's right. Either one of those extremes
is a really dangerous person. It's a dangerous person to having charge of your
church. It's a dangerous person to have in your life. It's a dangerous
kind of a person to be. That's right. Well, there was a
Oh, I just had a very fun thought and then I lost it.
But maybe I'll come back to me. But yeah, I think this element
up the way that traditional societies worked is really important. And this is the
this is kind of like the danger of go, oh, there's a thought,
all right, So this is the danger of going and like just reading
a whole bunch of canon law and then looking around at the people in your
parish or your priests. Has nobody's doing with there? What a bunch of
terrible hypocritess. None of them are doing it was there because that's not it's
not really how that works, right. And but the thing that I wanted
to point out is that when we talk about hierarchy, right, the bishops
that the Church has canonized, that we set up as being this is the
kind of person that you should be because they're like Christ, so you should
be like them. If you go and look at the lives of the bishops
the church is canonized. One of the things that's basically universal among them is
their care for the poor, right that they were out setting out of peace,
out of the personal treasury, not just for the poor on certain feast
days of the year, but every single day. Right. So they're the
people who best embody the highest thing, you know, in this case the
bishop, right, the highest thing becoming the lowest right and their ability to
kind of do that, and and so it's it's this sort of it's this
sort of interesting. I mean, the other big secret that that is kind
of offensive to modern Christianity is that is that uh I said, I said
a minute ago, like there are no warnings to the poor in the scriptures.
And and if you look at the way that this has been that this
has been uh kind of uh, the rigidity and the flexibility. We're just
talking about the way that's been enforced. It is it's the idea that the
poor man is the man who needs the party and maybe he needs to get
a little drug, right and then but it's actually it's you know, it's
the it's the well to do person, you know, feasting with all his
friends. He the person who needs to be who needs to be sober and
celebrate more soberly. Right, And what are the weird things that happens in
this is this is what Taylor calls like multiple multiple speed Christianity, right,
and what are the weird things that happens, especially with Puritanism is his idea
that's no, there's actually only one speed, and we have to hold the
poor person to the same standard that we hold the rich man. And that
sounds really egalitarian now, but it's not. Actually, that's not actually how
traditional societies work. So okay, So kind of one of the things I
want to point out that is maybe a little different in the medieval celebration of
Christmas, both in the East and the West, is the focus, especially
on Christmas Eve, in specific, the focus on Christmas Eve on the retelling
of the story of Adam and Eve. So if you become a church on
Christmas Eve in the Orthodox Church, you'll hear the reading of the opening narrative
of Genesis, the creation of a world in the follow man, right,
that's the that's that's the that's the that's the Old Testament readings for Christmas Eve.
If and this is where the sort of uh, there there is some
kind of different origins, and really they're probably all true to a certain extent,
but one of the main origins of the Christmas tree comes from the Paradise
tree, which would be set up on Christmas Eve, which is actually the
day you're supposed to put up your Christmas tree, not the day after American
Thanksgiving. Everybody, we sort of compromise and usually do it on Saint Nicholas
Day, okay in my family, but which is in a couple of days
from when we're recording this. But but anyway, but but Christmas Eve traditional
day when the tree goes up, and uh and and because the idea is
it's the tree of paradise, it is the tree of life, the tree
of paradise, and it was there the Paradise tree tradition both in East and
West. You said on the well, the Paradise tree not so much.
But what I'm saying is the focus that that's really a Western European thing.
But the I'm just saying, the focus on the focus on Adam and Eve
on Christmas Eve is is the thing of both the East and the West,
and it's something that it's weird. We kept the Paradise tree right and actually
became totally ubiquitous in the Western celebration of Christmas and in the East too,
everyone does Christmas trees. Now this is great. I'm super pro Christmas tree.
So like, go cut down a per tree, put it in your
living room. God will be pleased, like do it. But but but
but it's it's interesting because the liturgical focus, as far as I know,
and I could be wrong about this, but the liturgical focus in the West
on on Genesis on Christmas Eve has kind of been lost. But it was
really cool. In the Middle Ages, they would have passion plays about Adam
and youth. And this is the main this is the main. Let me
put it this way. This is the main time of year when somebody in
like medieval England would have interacted with the Genesis story, not just like not
just like seeing a picture of it or like heard it read or something like
that. But the main time of year that they would have actually interacted with
it in an embodied way would have been on Christmas Eve. So they would
they would have like plays. Yeah, and a passion play for people don't
know, is like a para liturtical thing. It's not something that happens in
the church, but it's it's it's the origin by the way of like the
like the Easter pageant or the Christmas pageant that maybe you did. I did
lots of these growing up, as you know, as an evangelical. Yeah,
and they're really cool memories. But but that has its basis in the
passion play. But the passion play was something that it's not something that they
did in the church. It's something that they did in like the village square
yea. And they had they had them for obviously the name passion play,
uh uh, you know implies passion tide. But they had them for but
they had them for all the various piece ds of the year. In fact,
the passion plays for the for Candle Miss Groundhog Day we talked about that
last year were really really cool. They had, you know, like a
woman from the village that they are selected to play the Virgin Mary, and
she would be carrying a baby and the whole city would village would possess with
her up to the door of the church and she'd present the babies to the
priests and all this stuff like it was you know, and so again these
are sort of like para liturgical ways to participate in the peace. Okay.
So and then also just one thing to mention is that because Christmas is a
day to go to church first and foremost is all these other things, but
the thing that makes it a holy day is the fact that you're having the
mass, that's the mass, increased mass, right, So it was considered
to be a very important day. So there are a lot of famous kings
and emperors, including Charlemagne, who were ordayed on Christmas Day. Right.
It was just considered to be like the most appropriate day for this kind of
an action. I said, coronation, ordination, right, But coronation is
that is a holy order, that's a sacrament of the Church. So all
right, so let me talk a little bit real quick about Christmas in the
early modern period. So what's really interesting is that the Reformation period gives birth
to both Christmas as we basically as we celebrate it now in the Western hemisphere,
but also to the general anti Christmas movement. Right, So like both
of those things come out of the Reformation. So on the one hand,
you have, for instance, Lutheranism, Martin Luther, big fan of Christmas
and which I take as a redeeming quality, and he he sort of engineered
the massive production of Christmas hymns and carols, and you can always tell a
Lutheran carol from a medieval Christian medieval English carol, because the medieval English carols
are like really weird and have like a lot of symbolism and things like this,
and the Lutheran carols, because they're written as theologically explicit songs, are
like very like obviously theologically explicit, and so it is, whereas whereas like
the older medieval carols are kind of more riddling in nature. But this is
when Christmas tree has really become a big thing, probably related to that Paradise
treem like we talked about, and also just the general very ancient practice in
that part of the world bringing greenery into the house as part of the winter.
Are there are there any of the medieval hymns that are still active now?
Yes, there are. I've actually kind of put together a playlist of
some of them, of course, all the ones that we so are you
asking about hymns or carols? Because again that's it carols, like, yeah,
yeah, yes, there are you. Probably the oldest one that people
know well is Good King Wenceslaus, which is about the which is about the
practice, by the way feeding the poor at Christmas, right, and one
of my favorite songs actually, but there's uh which is weird because it's not
like yet, It's like it doesn't talk about Christmas right directly in the way
that like Holy Night does. Let's say, yes, yeah, well it's
on the Feast of Stephen, which people used to know is the second day
of Christmas. But yeah, yeah, people used to know that better.
But but it's a very old carol I met. As far as other ones
that are like still in popular vernacular, I have a bunch of ones that
I like a whole lot that are not necessarily well known anymore. But abby
there, let me think about this. Maybe I'll try to post some on
the Facebook group. I put together a kind of like a pre modern advent
playlist and just try to find like all the carols and games that I could
find that had been written before a certain date. And I've done about thirty
or forty things on that list, and so maybe i'll maybe I'll share that
with with everybody again. But some of them are like well known. Some
of them are you know obviously all the all the Orthodox hymns for the feast
are all, you know, written in like the eighth century, so you
know that's all squarely pre modern. But but those aren't carols, right,
Okay, So Lutheranism produces just a massive number of Christmas hymns and carols.
Christmas trees really become a big thing. Actually, luther was big on Christmas
trees, not so much on the krash right, the Nativity scene. And
so what's really funny is eventually, this is the thing about Christmas, the
stickiness that we've been talking about. People don't get rid of Christmas traditions,
they just add new ones. And so so some people were like, no,
you should do a tree, not a craze, and so everybody's like,
great, we'll do both. In fact, we'll do a craze under
the Christmas tree. I see how you like that? You know? Yeah,
makes so much sense symbolically to have, right, right, it does
any of Evan and angels of lights, you know. And then at the
lot you have the you put an angel or a star at the top.
Yeah, right, the same thing. Yeah. I love. This is
why I love Christmas so much. And I think it was like my one
of my primary early like symbolic my early symbolic education really was just paying attention
to Christmas customs and things. Like I was talking about earlier, because everything
about Christmas is so deeply symbolically intuitive, it's just really beautiful. So and
a lot of the trappings that we think of as kind of defining the American
Christmas now were basically brought to North America by the Moravians, by the Pennsylvania
Dutch, and by these these other groups. And so there were several Continental
Reform churches, such as the Death Reformed, which did continue to celebrate Christmas.
They celebrated as one of the five evangelical feasts, which were Christmas,
Good, Priorday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. And I had never
understood, maybe somebody out there was to enlighten me, pastor Paul or somebody
else, why those are the evangelical beasts and not any of the other things
in the Gospels that are also Christian feasts, like you know, the native
evangelical. Usually when we say something is evangelical and historical sense, we've been
it's mentioned in the Gospels, right, But so is Transfiguration and Nunciation,
et cetera. So I don't know why, well, a five evangelical feast,
at least back then for the Dat Reformed, where I'm not saying of
anything about current practice. But where Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension,
and Pentecost. I think it's because Easter Ascension and Pentecosts, right,
that's all kind of one clusters. Is the coherence. You know how many
days you can get it from scripture pretty much? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah, that might be what it is. I think is because
the other days you can't get from scripture to celebrate the other ones. And
this is basically where we get the general idea in American Christianity. And here
I'm gonna speak very broadly of kind of like the Christmas and Easter rhythm,
if you know what I'm talking about, Like this idea by which you have
Christmas and that's a big deal on you Easter which is usually a really big
deal. And but there's really nothing else of particular spiritual significance between the two
other than, of course, you're just your Sunday observance, your Lord save
servants rights, which is how I grew up. Right. Where we really
get into trouble though, Christmas wise, is when we get into the Puritans,
right, And so here I have to say some things that uh,
well they're I'm just gonna read what they said, like, it's not fun.
Uh, these were not fun people. I don't know how to say
it here. Tins are not fun, not fun people. You can quote
man, but I think they would have said they were not fun. I
think it's okay. So the the Puritanical movement, by by this I mean
English Puritans, biggest sacs of of English Christians, who thought that the Church
of England and the Reformation had not gone far enough in rejecting what they call
pokery or papism, right, and so so they were really trying to like
purify. So you had your Puritans who were like, try to purify the
Church of England and the Separatists who were like, we're out of here,
right, But they really the kind kind of the same movement. And then
and then of course, uh, my own ancestors on one side of my
family, these Scottish Calvinists and who also did not like Christmas. Oh really
yeah, well some of them so so John Knox Famus Lee said, supported
the banning of Christmas on the grounds that it was superstitious. Various Piritan writers
referred to Christmas as being the trappings of potpoury. The rags of the beast
and so on, the rags of the beasts. Yeah, so this is
this is actually a really important thing to think about, I think, because
sometimes when people talk about this, they'll say something like, well, the
Puritans didn't ban Christmas. Actually they did for a very short period of time,
for about thirteen years, it was actually illegal to celebrate Christmas, like
straight up illegal to sell to Christmas in England. Talk about that in a
second. But they'll say something, but they were rejecting it, This is
what people will say. They'll say they were rejecting it because of the over
celebration and the tendency for people to over celebrate. So the thing that I
kind of want to point out here is two things. One is is there's
always been people, you know, inveighing against don't over celebrate, but it
had never been necessary to ban the holiday out right right. The other thing,
though, is to point out that the act of celebration, for the
pure sense, the act of celebration itself was associated with superstition and specifically Roman
Catholicism. Yeah. Right, and this even has weird manifestations. One of
my areas of study that I did, like a whole project on in my
graduate degree was actually the American Prohibition movement and the Temperance movement, which I'm
just really interested in for a lot of reasons. But one of the interesting
things that you'll find if you go back and you read a lot of the
early tempress literature, and I have. I've actually gone to the country's largest
Temperance archives to read through a munch of the early literature. What you'll find
is that is that there is a lot of frankly anti Catholic sentiment as a
part of the literature of the early Temperance movement. It's the German, Italian
Irish immigrants coming over here. They drink, who drink, and that's causing
the problem. Actually, it was actually probably the saloons that were causing the
problem, not the beer gardens. But that's a different conversation. We could
talk sometimes about the symbolism of going from we all get together as a family
to have some beer, and we're sitting at a table looking at each other.
Too, I'm sitting at a bar facing a bartender. There's an important
important shift that happens there as part of the Industrial Revolution. But anyway,
different conversation for a different day. The thing I want to really emphasize though,
is that all of the stuff, like the celebration, the drunkenness,
but then also like the Mass and the liturgy right the high things and a
lot of things about the feast day or the Puritan that was all a package
and it had to all be rejected. And so this leads the outright banning
starting in sixteen forty five. That again in sixteen forty seven they're the Passion
Ordinance in England abolishing the Peace of Christmas, Easter and whitson er Pentecost yea
too, abolishing Easter as well, like which people always forget about that,
Wow, we always forget about that, and that that remains in force until
the restoration in sixteen sixty. In fact, there was a really fun kind
of a popular song. I wish I remember to put the lyrics in my
notes for this talk, but there was like a kind of a fun popular
song celebrating because now we know, you know that Charles has had, Charles
has come back, Charles the second, because now we know when Christmas is
yeah yeah, and so there've been because have been like a lot of underground
celebrations and things like that. I didn't like think about it today if we
said, I mean they did it during COVID some right, Right, they're
like, you can't celebrate Christas this year, and it's like yeah, what
yeah, so yeah, this is like this this was all a package seal.
The pure tends to believe that by persian the liturgy and the iconography of
the papal religion, they would also be able to usher in an era of
moral improvement. Right, And that's the kind of the thing that's a continuous
theme of people who want to get rid of Christmas is that by doing so,
we'll make we'll become morally better as a society. Right. That it's
that Christmas is is associated with excess or it's associated with corruption, like decadence
of some sort, which is funny because like it's just interesting because that's the
danger of the feast. You know. It's like, right, you think
people don't get drunk at weddings? Right? Do you think people don't get
drunk at funerals? Do you think people don't? You know, It's like
when you gather together to celebrate something, it has uh, there's a kind
of ecstasy there. There's something going on which is both very positive but also
dangerous and so you kind of have to navigate that line so that it doesn't
fall into And it also is a revealer. It reveals it, you know,
the feast can reveal the nature of a group, Yeah, and reveal
its quality, you know, because if it gets out of hand, then
it also is showing something about the nature of that communion. Yes, that
is is a really important note. H. The other the other thing is
that when you when you try really hard to repress this, yeah, right,
that that it will pop up again. It will pop up in some
really dangerously excessive way. That's right, right, in the same way that
you know, uh, the if you you can have Christian liturgy or you
can have the occult like pick like you know, like but but there's a
liturgical impulse in human beings that they that you know, everybody has to participate
in something. So also like there's so many things about it, like social
dancing for example. Oh yeah, great example of that where it's like it's
like, can you be at a at a feast where you dance with someone
else's wife? Can you? Is that possible? And then what can you
maintain the order and the right the right ordering in that kind of that place
that could reveal your your darkness. Let's say, yeah, yeah, can
I tell you the jokes? Yeah, this is a joke that we back
as a Baptist growing up, we told about ourselves. So it's it's not
intended to be cruel. How Baptist is. So it goes like, how
Baptists am I? How Baptists are you? I'm so Baptist that we don't
play old Maid in the front of the house because if somebody drives through by
a fifty miles an hour looks through the windows seas of playing cards, they'll
assume we're playing poker. If we're playing poker, we're gambling. If you're
gambling, you're forticating. We all know that fortication at least to premarital dancing.
That's all right, Yeah, anyway, just yeah, oh, this
is a joke that we kind of told about ourselves. But I think there's
really something to that. Social dancing is, which is something I was not
allowed to do growing up, and then I married why my wife, who
loves dancing, and so we you know, so she sort of like introduced
me to it, and it was just like, man, it was always
a weird moment the first time that I danced a musing it was bizarre,
and the reason was bizarre. I discovered two things. One is I really
like dancing, but the other is that I suddenly realized what music was for.
Like I grew up, I was a violinist and I did a lot
of like Irish fiddle music, like jigs and reels, which are just down
dancing. But I'd never danced in my life, and so my wife I
used to do, like, we got really into a folk dance at a
period and we did a bunch of Scottish country dance and the first time I
like danced to a reel, but I was actually doing the real Suddenly everything
about the music clicked in the place for me, and it was just this
very bizarre moment of realizing that that like there was a whole half of me
that was dead and then it just came to life and it was it was
just very it was very strange. So yeah, it all this to say,
there was this period, you know, a relatively short period, but
a pretty infamous period has really scarred English society for a long time, where
it was actually against the law to celebrate Christmas, and of course The real
irony in all of this is that the direct descendants of Puritans will now vociferously
to have a Nativity scene in a public space, right to fight for the
use of merry Christmas instead of just happy Holidays and so on, because there's
this stickiness about Christmas, like you can do whatever you want to, but
Christmas will win. Eventually, it will win. And plenty of other people
have tried to get rid of it since the time of the Puritans. We
could talk about talking about some of the moment, but of course there's like
a modern manifestation of Puritanism that is sort of like the political correct that PC
woke culture, right, that tries really hard to get rid of Christmas,
or to change Christmas or to like reimagine it in some way. I mean,
think about any modern TV show. It's been a thing in American network
television for decades that you have to have a Christmas episode. Yeah, right,
And so one of the things that you'll see in more recent TV shows
is that whenever the Christmas episode comes around, they have to do more and
more to kind of like recontextualize what Christmas means. But they can't get away
from doing the episode and Christmas man Christmas aesthetics. They are powerful. You
cannot get rid of that. Like just it's weird because even like even the
the even the all the efforts of all the marketing companies to reduce it and
to remove the Christian part of it and to stylize it, and to do
that is just feeding it. Like you cannot get rid of of the Christian
the Christmas like visuals, the smell, the music. It just there's no
way now, like I imagine trying to to get rid of that. Yeah,
yeah, so actually you mentioned the smell. I wanted to make sure
I didn't forget to mention this. So because New England, New England specifically
other parts of the US were found that we're settled by different people, many
of who were like had no trouble with Christmas at all. But but New
England was settled by Puritans and separatists, right. And one of the really
interesting things there is that at some point in the history of New England,
was before the American Revolution, the towns in New England would actually hire mince
snippers. They were called mince snippers. So the job of a mince snipper
is to walk through the village to walk through the town on Christmas Day and
sniff the air and make sure nobody's cooking Christmas foods on Christmas Day. Man,
and you could be like really severely punished, really severely punished for celebrating
Christmas, you know, at that particular time. So and at that time,
like the whole idea of Christmas celebration again, like that's something the German
immigrants at the end of the street might be doing, but good Puritan families
were participating in that. So to kind of get up up to modern times,
the early nineteenth century is really a renaissance for Christmas celebrations in the anglosphere.
And this is for two reasons. What is the Oxford Movement, which
is basically this, It was like a movement within the Church of England to
kind of return to like a more patristic basis for the tradition. It's kind
of when Anglo Catholicism as such sort of develops into a whole flower right and
kind of right along the same time, you had a guy named Charles Dickens
and I know they made a movie about him a couple of years ago or
something called The Man who Invented Christmas, which I actually did not see because
I hate seeing movies about historical figures that I like or I know a lot
about, because I'll just get angry, especially now it's actually now, right
twenty years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't know what they're
going to do. But so I don't know if the movie is are any
good or not, but it's it's like, you know, there's something about
the title there, the man who invented Christmas is like a little cheeky.
But also also it's not totally wrong, right, Like I said, Christmas
had been pretty had taken a pretty big hit in the seventeenth century and it
was being celebrated in England again, but also it was it was still like
there was just a lot of every year like kind of like hand ringing around
the celebration of Christmas and et cetera. So, but this really between the
oxtor of movement and they're trying to go back and basically revive the medieval practices
of these feasts, and then Charles Dickens coming along and writing a Christmas Carol
did a ton to revive traditional celebrations of the holiday, focused especially on the
ancient theme of charitable works at this time, which again is a very important
part of traditionally celebrating Christmas. And to this day, I mean, you
say what you want to say about Americans, but to this day it makes
this time of you that we are the most likely to give to charity,
even people who don't think about or give anything to the poor the rest of
the year. On Christmas, there's suddenly it's like generosity that where our hearts
will open up, you know, a little bit more than they were opened
before. It's interesting that Dickens. It's funny because now I'd never thought about
that, but I think now that it's called a Christmas carol. It's a
secular you know, it's not directly Christian. It kind of floats around the
themes like what you described about the Christmas carols. That's exactly why it's called
a Christmas carol. And it's it's it's so interesting because there are of course
references to people going to church, references to Christ, references to like the
theme of the day that the little babe and the major who makes the lame
walk, and you know, et cetera. Right, that's all in there.
But you're right, it's a it's not a liturgical story. It's not
just a retelling of the Nativity narratives from the Gospels or something like that.
It's this sort of thing that's happening around the church, right in the around
the church, specifically throughout the life of one man, and it kind of
creates this really I think, I think, what is so genius about the
Christmas Carol. I mean, we should do a whole video just on it
is that it We're gonna talk in a moment about these idea of like sort
of notots in time, right, which is really what a feast day is,
and the Christmas Carol takes that idea runs with it because it ties Scrooge's
entire life together over the course of one Christmas to the next, right,
which which becomes like a really powerful way of thinking about our own lives.
Right, you know, where were we on this feast day? What person
were we on this piece? Stay So, in the United States, like
I said, Christmas was really seen more as more of an ethnic holiday,
which meant that you actually had whole communities that just didn't celebrate Christmas, which
is kind of unthinkable now until about the late nineteenth century, and it really
starts to be celebrated in the late nineteenth century thanks to the works of poets
like the guy whose name I'm forgetting right now who wrote that was called a
Visit from Saint Nicholas twas the Night before Christmas, you know that poem,
and then which which which really basically kicks off the whole idea of gift giving
at Christmas in the United States. Yeah, and joins the feasts of St.
Nicholas with Christmas, because I was wondered, like when did that happen
at some point for us? It's crushed together in the West. Yeah,
yeah, and Nicholas and Christmas are the same. And then you you like
I had a Romanian priest in our parish for a few years, and he
was really annoyed that we gave gifts at Christmas, and it was like really
trying to like make sure that we give or gifts, you know, on
Saint Nicholas Day, which, oh, that's so fun. He didn't succeed
though, like it nice tries too now it's too deep, Like yeah,
yeah, you can't, you can't do it. And then there was also
Harriet beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is I guess a little
infamous now, but anyway, she also wrote a story I think it's called
A Christmas in New England, which did a lot to kind of popularize the
celebration of Christmas. And like, the whole focus of A Christmas in New
England, right is on this sort of like immigrant community within New England that's
celebrating the holiday and that other people kind of get involved and participate in it.
And so yeah, so the late nineteenth century is really when Christmas takes
off in the United States, and this culminates in its declaration as a federal
holiday in eighteen seventy. And it's important to note that for Americans that wasn't
even a holiday. Great because it wasn't even a holiday up to the time,
and it's totally unthinkable now. But like George Washington didn't celebrate Chris forg
on Christmas, like like it did just work on Christmas. He thought that
he attacked the Hessians were Germans on Christmas because they were celebrating and it was
like that's like his famous like crossing the Delaware attacks the Hessians. What if
the most important victories of the American Revolutionary War worked because the Americans weren't celebrating
on Christmas Day and the and the Hessians work right. So it's like these
various, like very interesting kind of history there in our early status as a
early time as a nation, and then Christmas kind of developing more and more
firsus this immigrant thing, and that now it's totally universal. And so there's
a lot more that we could probably say about the symbolism of the holiday.
I kind of run out of time here to talk about the use of like
Santa Claus as a marketing image. Yeah, where Coca Cola specifically, and
also but I think it's important. I think this is an argument that people
use a lot, is that in some ways, you know, Santa Claus
to Day was made up by Coca Cola, and I really I resist that
to some extent. I agree, I agree. You know, I think
that the character of Father Christmas and Saint Nicholas were there in the nineteenth century.
You see the characters, and then they kind of get fused into one
one one character, which is our modern Santa Claus. But and then and
then the marketing companies kind of jump on that, and you know, Coca
Cola did simplify the costume. Let's say in terms of the white band and
stuff and need it. Let's be honest, like a little more palatable to
some people, right, like well, less less of a bishops right exactly,
some guy with a crozier and a Bishopsmeier. Like that's not gonna that's
not gonna play in because like post yeah exactly, like post Puritan Erica.
Yeah. But but nonetheless, like they stumble onto all this. This is
why when you talk about how Christmas is so sticky, it's like, you
know, people, I did a video on Rudolph the Red Noos Reindeer,
which is basically was made up by like, what was it, one of
the big department stores in the United States, and it was given out at
Christmas as a gift to people buying at the department store to get people into
the store. But they stuck bumbled onto true things. You know, there's
something about how symbolism happens. And I think in the symbolism of Santa Claus
and the way that we think about the sleigh and everything, all of these
these are very powerful images that that that even though marketing companies came up with
them or brought them up, it doesn't really matter if we recognize in them
some images that have weight, and the fact that they're remembered means that there's
there's some actual weight in those images. Yeah, I'm a huge sucker for
Santa Claus movies in general. Miracle All thirty fourth Street is a really There
are two remixs to They made it twice and both both versions are quite good.
I think there's also there was an animated film about Santa Claus, like
us. Santa Claus is like a family dynasty that came out a few years
later called a few years ago rather called Arthur Christmas, and it's a it's
a really interesting movie. It is. It does a lot of sort of
interesting things, like tries to subvert the Santa Claus symbolism at the outset and
then shows all the problems that that causes, and then by the end things
have to kind of revert back to the traditional pattern. And I haven't seen
it to watch that. Yeah, it's interesting. It's really I would love
to know your thoughts about it. It's it's it's an interesting one, but
but uh, but yeah, I think that it's one of these weird things
because actually the Soviet Union, of course tried to also abolish Christmas, and
when they did, they just replace it with a winter holiday, and they
had a they had Old Man Winter you know who looks was dressed exactly like
Santa Claus, right, and he's the one that brings you to the presence,
now, you know, you know, and uh, there's something about
this, right. Uh. All of the attempts actually to revive or or
create competing winter holidays in the second world around us today. Going back to
the French Revolution, my favorite one is the do you guys, do you
have like the Three Kings k because that's something that you yeah, we do
that here. Yeah, yeah, So that's that's not that's a that's a
Prench thing. It's it's not something that I grew up with, but it's
a prince thing. Uh. And so you'll you'll you'll get a kick out
of knowing that. During the French Revolution they renamed the Three Kings cake to
the Equality Cake, which is which is amazing because the original story about the
Three Kings is that you have like the highest thing becomes low, and then
the high thing comes down and venerates the thing that's become low. That was
it, you know, like and then it was like, you know,
equality cake. It's all perfectly, it's all perfectly. Even they don't put
they don't put the sea. I mean they don't put the seed in there.
They don't I assume not because it's like, hey, someone gets someone
specially if you find yeah, have that it's just the cake. Yeah.
Anyway, it's like in Quebec we like in French, in Quebec we Santa
Claus. We called him Father Christmas. Yeah, like that's how and that's
a that's ael and that's like that. There's this whole character that appeared in
Western Europe and in France that had the had the hat and was very similar
to the way that we understand uh uh Santa Claus. Now, so it's
like all these characters get fused. Yeah, it seems like it's a thing
that that has to happen, you know. Yeah, So I want to
there's a lot more we could say about this, but there are a few
things that I would to point out that are like really beautiful to me about
all of this that we've kind of been talking about. And then I'm going
to give you what I call my midwit defense of Christmas. All Right,
So the first thing is just to say that kind of against the general detractors
of Christmas, right, that the Christmas is actually not our most over commercial
time of the year. We're always over commercialized. Christmas is the only time
of year that we notice it, right because you know, if you think
about like all the kids and like the one dollar you know, like the
bargain bands and stuff at Target or Walmart or whatever, like those are there
all year, you know, but only at Christmas do you notice it and
get irritated about it. Yeah. I think it is a really beautiful time
where the sort of the say, the soft iconic plasm of American religion gives
way to not just like putting up Nativity scenes, the statues of Jesus,
Joseph and marry like in your house, in your yard in the village square,
right, but actually defending that practice in the court of public opinion,
which is just really something to think about. Yeah. And it's also the
time of year, like I mentioned, but by the numbers, we're the
most generous, right, It's the one day a year that even confirmed heathens
will show up to church. So I was a pastor and from a family
of pastors, and I get that there's always something in you that wants to
complain when somebody shows up on Christmas Day or an East or Pasca and you
haven't seen them a year. Yeah, you know, it's like, oh,
so now you're here, right, But like you could also flip that
around though, and think about the fact that there's something so potent about this
day that even the most confirmed heathen will still show up to light a candle,
or they'll still show up to him mid night, like they'll still come
to church with their kids, like they take their kids to church the one
day here there's something really special so that they really potent about this day.
So I want to kind of explain that. I'll give you what I call
my midwit apology or defense of Christmas. And I call it a mid with
some people know I'm a big fan of like the format the mid with me,
right, And so you know, I'm sure we can put one up
here on the screen is something. But you know, the idea is this
is you have like a really dumb person that went in and a really smart
person at the other end, and there's a dull curve for the middle,
and the dull curve of the middle that guy's the Midwi. So in this
case, the meme is really the really simple person who says, celebrate Christmas
because it is jesus birthday, right, And then at the other end you
have the saint who says the same thing, celebrate Christmas because of Jesus' birthday.
And for a lot of people, and I'll I'll go as far as
to say, probably the majority of the people watching this video, that is
enough. That is enough. But for all the people kind of like in
the middle there the source, yes, the sources people, Yes, we
need like a little more kind of an explanation of understanding of why we're doing
with things that we're doing. And again, as I said to me,
this is a really important this is really important thing. So I'm gonna read
some little bits and kind of talk through some bits from Charles Taylor's work A
secon Your Age, which is one of the most important books that I think
anybody could read right now. And what's amazing is that a lot of the
ideas that I have really better benefited from here on the symbolic world listening to
your videos and conversations over the last several years. I first encountered in Taylor
and then when I saw your videos. I was like, oh, somebody
else is talking about that same thing, right, and it was just really
validating a certain way. So he talks about basically this idea that there are
three kinds of time. For medieval man, there are three kinds of time,
and the first one is the In one of our previous videos, I
refer to this as the difference between cronos and cairos as two kinds of time.
But Taylor says there's three. Right. So there's first of all,
there's there's chronos, which we could refer to as was what Taylor calls homogeneous
or empty time, right, which from modernity is the central form of time,
right, history as a series of accidents, right in the philosophical sense,
like history as a series of accidents cause and effect and just sort of
this cause and effect in an endless chain with no particular meaning to it,
right. And then the second kind of time is what we could call chirotic
time. And so chirotic time would be time being filled with meanings. So
Taylor says that the time of Carnival, for instance, is chirotic. That
is, the timeline encounters chirotic knots. So you have this this straight line,
and the suddenly you get kind of like a knot where everything gets kind
of snarled up and bended together, and moments whose nature and placing calls for
reversal, followed by others demanding rededication, and still others which are approach Parusia.
So this is his Shrove Tuesday, lent Easter right, So Shrove Tuesday,
that's Marty Grass, right, is this a great amount of carnival or
reversal followed by lent for rededication and then Easter, which is like Parusia,
the coming, the reviewing. So now there are chirotic knots in the stories
we tell about ourselves at our time. Revolutions themselves are understood by their errors
and supporters as such chirotic moments. You think about whatever country you live in
and the important political moments or like revolutions that you've had. In my case,
like the American Revolution becomes this huge kind of chirotic moment where the actual
details and timelines about George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and the founding fathers in July
to fourth and all that stuff is less important than all of those things kind
of being gathered together in that particular moment, it says nationalists were. Historiography
is full of such moments, but what has changed is that around which these
moments gather. So in the pre Bodered era, the organizing field for ordinary
time comes from these higher times. So the higher times are basically two sources.
So if you think of ordinary time as like secular time, I know
that the word secular can mean various different things here, but for now we'll
just call it this sort of homogeneous chronological time. There are kind of two
sources for that meeting. And what is eternity, right, eternity sort of
breaking into ordinary time. And then the other is what Taylor calls like the
Great Time. Right, this is this is like say, like mythical time.
This is like when all the important stuff happened to make the way the
world that it is today. Right. So if you're you know, living
in like a pre like like a stoneyache civilization or something, the great time
is like when the gods were on earth walking around and immortals. Right.
You know, for the Christian story, the great time is really the gospel,
right, the gospels from Christ was here on earth, right when he's
establishing these things. And there's this idea that Taylor really develops the way that
you have the horizontal dimension of secular time, but also these vertical dimensions where
eternity and where and then or the great time kind of break into that secular
time. And you could say, like the more pronounced that happens, the
bigger the not becomes. And this is what makes UH these relationships. And
it's really a three way relationship between homogeneous time and UH and you know,
like our mythical history and then eternity. The more relationships there are, the
bigger than that becomes. And this is actually what gives time me. And
there's a famous line in Hamlet and I'm still waiting for all the symbolic real
people to have like the big Hamlet moment. So maybe it'll happen. Because
Hamlet is a tremendously important, one of Shakespeare's most important place. It's mentally
important work of literature because it's it's one of the things that Hamlet is grappling
with, is the is the sort of the great disenchantment and the passover from
the ancient world into the modern. Right. It's it's not for nothing that
that Hamlet has just come from you know, university, you know in Germany
at the birthplace of the Reformation. These just come from university in jur and
many at their birth birthplace of modernity. Right. He's coming back and he's
trying to apply these modern understandings to this, these encounters with the world that
are just wild and insane. His father is a ghost, and his mother,
you know, and and a big cuckle that like all these things,
and Halett eventually goes insane like trying to kind of keep it all together,
you know, and you know, get stabbed and a deal and everything else
as well. But but I mean the kind of the point, you know,
this is one of the big things that the play is wrestling with.
And but there's this line in there where he says the times are out joint,
the times are out of joint, which has kind of become like a
like a phrase. But this is what it means. It means that he's
he's he's he's not just saying the condition of Danish society at this particular time
is lamentable. That's not what he means. He means that things aren't fitting
together in the proper fashion anymore. As they do in times which are closer
to those ordering paradigms of eternity at the sacred time, and it's it's interesting.
This comes relatively soon after he's having a discussion with Marcella's and Marcella says,
you know that ghosts of goblins don't dare walk the earth on Christmas Eve.
You know, I'm so hallid and so gracious as the time, which,
by the way, you know this is Hamlet a Christmas story. Well,
Diehard is a Christmas story. Hamlet is definitely a Christmas story. But
anyway, so the thing with Christmas is that it's one of these moments,
and the other moment really is the Crucifixion, which is something that Taylor also
identifies that the Crucifixion and Christmas are these two moments where there's a complete like
like the relationships that kind of keep all of these things related to each other
are like the most complete, right, the symbolism matches up the most right,
you could say. And because of that, these moments become extremely sticky,
or the knots become like really really tangled, and and it becomes almost
impossible, becomes almost impossible to disentangle those things and so what people try to
do is sort of cut the gority and not and just like cut right through
it and say no more Christmas. Right, But Christmas has this tremendous regenerative
quality to it. And I think it's because it's the moment when it's the
moment when the great time and eternity and chronological time. I mean, it's
really important that Christ was born in Bethlehem. We know more or less the
day, we know more or less the year, but it's really important that
God enters history because the other option is that you have with the situation that
the Greeks had, which would be chronological time and then eternity like the world
of ideas, and that there's nothing, there's nothing to kind of bridge the
gap between them. So what they end up coming up with is the idea
of time as being sort of Sempi turtle, which is constantly constantly progressing basically
time with no beginning or no end, right, like always change but never
full film it. Right. And but in Christmas we get this, we
get this, this fulfillment of all of these things, and at all of
the sort of the vertical and the horizontal dimensions of time come together in this
work. Yeah, yeah, which is here is in the story itself we
meant to Obviously we don't want to go through all the Christmas symbolism, but
there it is the tree with the with the activity set, you know,
at the at the bottom of the manger, whether it is the angels singing
down to the shepherd's you know they're they're just countless, or it is these
these wise men that come from Afar, like, all of the symbolism of
Christmas is about this intersection in the story itself, not even accounting for what
it is, what it's actually doing for us at that moment. So this
is my just to wrap this up. This is my argument for why you
have to celebrate Christmas. Right, It's not just enough to believe that the
child born of a virgin was the logos from before the ages. Right.
We can say we believe that all we want to, but if we don't
act on that information some way and the way that you act on this information,
the Taylor referre talked about liturgy and like the idea. Let's say you
talked about the feast, the act of celebration as being like a song.
Right, so the song has a melody like a think of like a little
melody has sequential moments, you know, all these different notes and everything,
but really the beginning to the end of that song all happened at the same
moment because it's a unit. Right, So if you don't sing the song,
then you're not actually you have no way of participating in it in that
moment. The moment just passes you by. Right, And if you don't
celebrate Christmas, then the moment, this holy moment, right, this moment
with Heaven and Earth everything comes together into this point, right, that moment
just passes you by, and pretty soon you stop believing at all, right,
you stop really thinking. I mean, you know, there's there are
certain organizations that will do like polls to see like what's the state of belief?
You know, and like year after year if you look at this,
one of the questions on there is is a true or false Jesus Christ is
the greatest being ever created by God, right and so and that's it's one
of the questions on the survey and hor question every well, yeah, it's
it's definitely a leading question, right. But the question, yeah, but
what happens is that every year or every four years when they do the survey,
that number goes up by ten or fifteen percent. Yeah, right,
where people are just sort of like sliding into arianism. Right, And you
know, there's a lot that could be said about the state of catechesis and
theological education in churches in America's day, et cetera, et cetera. But
really the thing that we need to do is not just put Christ back on
Christmas, but put the mass back in Christmas right, to really keep the
feast, to keep the celebration, and you can keep it at every sing
go one of these dimensions. You can go to church and contemplate the mystery.
You can wake your neighbors up, you know, at nine o'clock at
night and seeing seeing them songs and offer them booze. Like, you can
do all of this stuff, right. You can participate in all of these
dimensions, and if you do, you'll be more of a human being than
you were. But if you do, you will also be able to draw
closer to Christ and closer to your neighbor. Right, And that actually,
without these things, what ends up happening is that time just becomes Does anybody
remember COVID? Right, with all the celebrations taken away like like what happened
time, what happened during COVID exactly, time just becomes this long kind of
like like undifferentiated linear. Yeah, you know, passage and and nothing there,
and there's no memory, right, there's no memory, there's no participation.
So that's the MIDWD explanation. The easy one is it's Jesus birthday.
Why wouldn't you celebrate it? So all right, Richard, that's great,
Thank you so much, And don't forget everybody, by the way, that
Richard will be there at the Symbolic World summit. So if you want to
have so many crazy things planned from the Universal History panel, I mean,
I'm really gonna I'm going to really like just not restrain myself even a little
bit. We're gonna get this really fun shared stuck. So so I can't
I definitely can't wait to everybody. Thanks again, Richard. I wish you
a merry Christmas and uh likewise, see you in the in the in the
new year. If you enjoyed these videos and podcasts, please go to the
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So go to the Symbolic World dot com and thank you for your support.
I want to invite you all to the very first Symbolic World Summit.
Over three days, we will finally meet in real time, in real space,
and everyone from this little corner of the Internet will be there to explore
the theme of reclaiming the cosmic image. Of course I will be speaking,
but there will also be Martin Shaw, who is an amazing mythographer, father
Stephen de Youong of Lords Spirit Fame. There will be Richard Rowland from the
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will see you there. So much planing and