Merry Christmas!


To: Friend 


From: Bloch Party


Greetings from a snow-filled Virginian suburb (reminds me of Gran Torino)!

I have been talking with my friend Mr. Crawford in Phoenix about how important the Christmas traditions are.  To have a Christmas tree, to sing carols, to put your shoes out for St. Nick: these constitute a fuller and richer Christmas.  Without these traditions Christmas can go one of two ways.  The first (a double bad naughty) way is to not have these traditions and devotions at all: this is a privation of taste and culture, but more importantly they are outward signs which show the proper joy at the incredible and momentous occasion as the celebration of the birth of God.  Therefore, a lack of these traditions is a scrooged mess.  It’s all backwards, it’s the proper vision of these outward signs that insures a proper understanding of Christmas.  The other way (only a venial, single bad naughty) way is to distort these traditions and Hallmarkize them: make Christmas distant by reducing it to a materialistic secular celebration of (albeit good honest virtues) gift-giving, fellowship, family, relaxation, Jesus, baby-Jesus, and peace on earth Obama Prius Recycling Juno Soundtrack Latte Indie Macbook Dreadlock Christmas.


Last night I went to traditional Latin Midnight mass at St. John’s in McLean Virginia. The profundity of the nativity was impressed upon me amidst the beauty of the full choir and orchestra singing magnificent polyphony and chant, amidst the incense billowing out and the old priest struggling to genuflect at the consecration, the incarnation–God becoming man and being among us and one of us.  
The hallmarkization of Christmas allows us to hide and cover up the fact that Jesus was God made flesh and born in a manger (a food trough–oh okay, let’s put the king of the universe in a dog food bowl).  
Without the full effect of these traditions, another Christmas goes by, we loose the magic of Santa coming and there is nothing but either an absence of understanding or a covering up of the meaning of Christmas.  These traditions–having a Christmas tree, giving gifts, caroling, visiting the cresh, lighting the advent wreath–need to be reinvigorated, refreshed.  St. Francis did this when he created the world’s first ever dramatic representation of the cresh or nativity scene.  He did it that the people might know that it was a hardship, a birth in a stable, laying in a food bin on the refuse of oriental hay, but it brought the fact of the incarnation to the people.


So how can we restore the traditions that are so important?  My friend, Mr. Crawford, and I believe that it is imperative that you have a Christmas tree at the very least.

• Buy a real tree, get a tree if you have a family (bachelors need to get trees too).
• Get an advent wreath and light the candles at dinner (bachelors need to eat dinner sitting down).
• Don’t listen to “Christmas Music” until at least a week before Christmas, so that you can still have the energy to celebrate the traditional 12 days of Christmas.
• Take a chance on Christmas Eve to meditate on this one thought: God (the first mover, infinite Being, and your creator) became like that which he created.  He became man, took on our nature!  The incarnation is something that has rocked the world for 2000 years and caused history to turn.  Just ponder the significance of that for about, I don’t know, 10-15 minutes.
• Sing traditional Christmas carols when you are with friends.
• Go to a concert, many churches patronize the arts in the Christmas season, and often put on performances from Handle’s Messiah and other classically beautiful pieces.
• Eat, Drink, and be merry!  Leisure is the basis of culture, and the feast is possible through leisure.
• Visit the nativity scene at Church and pray in front of it, realizing that it was a hardship, not a hallmark warm-fuzzy to be born in a stable.

            Peter Bloch