A teeny-tiny teaching from the Bubble: The word "Christmas" is derived from Christ's Mass -- a reminder of the Catholic character and origin of this beautiful Holy Day. I am grateful that our Protestant friends keep two of the great Feast Days of the Church (Easter being the other). Not everything Catholic is so bad after all! ;)
(Hey, in light of the above, I just realized that "Christmas Mass" is actually redundant!!)
Another little teaching regarding this wonderful Christmas season is that Christmas is... a season! The four weeks leading up to Christmas is the season of Advent, and Christmas itself begins on December 25! So, you don't have to stop celebrating Christmas just because it's December 26, or even January 1. You can continue celebrating up until at least the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6), and some say till the following Sunday, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord! So, now is the time to start the festivities, not end them! Merry Christmas!
**************
The big prayer buddy reveal is here!!
I was so excited when I learned who my prayer buddy was going to be this time around! I love this sweet young woman, and I long ago crowned her and her dear husband "the cutest couple on the blogs" (yep, that's a dead giveaway right there!). She radiates joy and faithfulness, and she gives me such hope for the future of the Church!
The best part is, she is expecting her first sweet little one in just a few weeks, and I was so honored to pray for her intentions, offering masses and daily sufferings (there have been a few big ones and a lot of little ones)!
I couldn't be more thrilled that my prayer buddy is..............
Thanks for always being such an inspiration!
Merry Christmas!
ReplyDeleteIt always makes me so depressed to see neighbor's Christmas trees out on the curb the day after Christmas, and their decorations pulled down immediately. I love having our tree and lights up until January 6th :). Of course, they've all had their stuff up since Thanksgiving and I just got mine up a couple days before Christmas...
Merry Christmas Leila! And thank you for your prayers!
ReplyDeleteI think "hope for the future of the Church" is the biggest compliment anyone could give me :)
It's nice that the Catholics continued the pagan traditions of the midwinter festival. All of those pagan rituals weren't so bad after all!
ReplyDeleteReading up on all of this Catholic stuff is really mind-boggling. I'm trying to find the best link to a site that talks about the pagan origins of Christmas, and how the Catholics co-opted the pagan festivals and made it their own. This quote from the Catholic encyclopedia is really amazing - the whole article is amazing in itself. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03724b.htm
Anyway, from the article: The present writer in inclined to think that, be the origin of the feast in East or West, and though the abundance of analogous midwinter festivals may indefinitely have helped the choice of the December date, the same instinct which set Natalis Invicti at the winter solstice will have sufficed, apart from deliberate adaptation or curious calculation, to set the Christian feast there too.
They just happened to pick the same date. Here's another prime quote: "O, how wonderfully acted Providence that on that day on which that Sun was born . . . Christ should be born." How wonderful a coincidence, indeed.
Mai, you could have just asked. I would have told you that Christianity has always sought to Christianize paganism. It's how we roll.
ReplyDeleteProtestants seem to find that distasteful, but Catholics have always come to a culture and built Christianity on what was already there.
So, you are barking up the wrong tree here, if you think your comments are some kind of "gotcha."
Mai, you should do some research on the Star that the Magi followed- you may find the history (of the astronomy) quite amazing, from the first year AD. We Catholics know that the actual calendar DATE is not the important thing about Jesus' birth... but you can certainly find out the actual date if you do a little legwork (and you do seem to be good at doing that, when you want to, that is).
ReplyDeleteLeila, I'm sure Kaitlin really felt your prayers- they are so powerful :)
Merry Christmas!
Thanks, TCIE! You are so sweet!
ReplyDeleteMai, to follow up on what TCIE said, my grade school son told me yesterday that Jesus was not actually born in December. I told him he was right and patted him on the head. He knew that from his Catholic upbringing. :)
Also, I don't want to over-generalize about Protestants. It is mostly the fundamentalists who do not like or understand the Church's Christianization of pagan feasts. Some staunch fundamentalists don't even celebrate Easter or Christmas because of it.
Even when Christianity first moved into the Greco-Roman (Hellenistic) culture from its Jewish OT origins theologians had to interpret the Bible in terms of the Greek thought of Plato in order to communicate it.
ReplyDeleteEven today we seek to communicate Christian faith in terms the culture can understand...like Leila does so well!
Bubbles aren't necessarily Christian either, but they are when they are "Little Catholic" ones. :-)