Nollaig Chríostóir Duit
Once more we prepare to celebrate the nativity of Jesus
Christ.
We rejoice to hear anew the
proclamation of the angel:
Today
in the town of David, Bethlehem in Judea, a saviour has been born to you.
A Saviour has been born for us; a Son given to us.
Christ, in becoming human allows us
to share in the glory of His immortal nature. He frees us from death and the
power of sin and darkness. This promise of salvation is ours and so we rejoice
in the knowledge that God is now with us.
Our world is overshadowed by war, injustice, oppression,
division, and selfish concerns, but the Good News proclaimed by Christ continues to
offer us salvation and hope. His words speak to us today; they
reassure us; and fill us with hope:
Peace I leave with you, my
peace I give to you.
Do not let your hearts be
troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
I am the way, and the truth
and the life.
I am the good shepherd.
I am the bread of life.
As Christians, whatever our particular 'tradition', we profess and proclaim that the Divine word is made flesh and is the true light that enlightens all people. Through the power of
the Holy Spirit, with the spiritual acceptance of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, the only-begotten Son of the Father came into our midst.
In absolute humility He was, and is, embedded in the world; and embedded in our
hearts.
This child will grow to His maturity and He calls us to
accompany Him. We are invited to live our lives in His company. There will be
days of joy and there will be days of sacrifice. It will be His ultimate
sacrifice that will lead us all to glory. Only when we are bathed in the light
of His resurrection can we begin to comprehend our own existence and our eternal
destiny.
This helpless child will become the man upon the Cross,
offering the embrace of His love to the whole world. As heralds of peace, let
us embrace one and all.
Glory to God in the highest
heaven and peace to all people of good will..
May the light of hope illuminated by the Holy Spirit burn
within our hearts this Christmas.
May the light of God’s love shine through us this Christmas and in the New Year.
May our
witness of faith be an invitation for others to believe in the gift of
salvation that Christ offers us all.
Happy Jack wishes one and all a Blessed, Joyful, and Peaceful Christmas.
A blesséd Christmas to everyone!!
ReplyDelete(from Gadjo)
DeleteCrăciun Fericit, Gadjo!
DeleteMulţumesc, HJ!
DeleteAnd a very happy Christmas to you too, Jack, and to Mrs. Jack, and to the younger generation of Jacks, and to your grandchildren Lucy and Seth.
ReplyDeleteI’m guessing that the unidentified language up at the top there is of either Caledonian or Hibernian origin. In either case I can only reply, Feliz Natal para todos! Happy Christmas, everybody!
Irish Gaelic, Ray.
ReplyDeleteChristmas of Christ to you - intended to emphasise the Christian roots of the holy day.
皆さん、メリークリスマス！
ReplyDeleteA very merry, happy and blessed Christmas to one and all.
Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One, and the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One! Angels, with shepherds, glorify Him! The wise men journey with the star! Since for our sake the Eternal God is born as a little child.
This reminds me of “The God in the Cave”, the the first chapter of the second part of “The Everlasting Man” by G.K.Chesterton:
Deletehttps://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/65688/pg65688-images.html#page_191
In many people's memory, Christmas was not a good time. Perhaps that's because it's the one time of the year when people have traditionally let the good become the enemy of the perfect. If Christmas wasn't perfect, it was hell, and there was nothing in between. If ANYTHING went wrong at Christmas, it was magnified out of all proportion, and I suspect that phenomenon has become worse as society has become less Christian -- we've forgotten what it's actually all about.
ReplyDeleteWe've all had that horrible Christmas we just want to forget, but it's always the one that looms largest in our minds, no matter how old we get, and it's the one that sets the template. We should not allow that to happen. Christmas isn't about reindeer and snowy landscapes. If ever there was a time to get back to the hope-in-poverty of what Christmas is really about, we're living that time today. Forget Santa, think St Nicholas of Myra, and pray.
There's a lot of pressure on people to have a 'perfect' Christmas, which is often a hybrid of a romanticised Dickensian/1950s family Christmas that never existed. I was playing at an annual charity winter jazz concert last night, and chatting to people afterwards I've never seen so much stress and fear - fear of what's happening in the wider world, fear of not being able to afford a perfect Christmas, fear of what the new year holds. And then there are those people for whom Christmas is just a painful reminder of those they've lost, those who are no longer here, or of the dread that this might be the last Christmas that they or a loved one see.
DeleteI think, for very many people, that the Light of the World seems dimmer and further away than it has ever been. And our churches can tend to forget these people, too, as caught up as they are in the joy and festivity and the sparkling baubles of the season - but Christ didn't come to bring joy to the joyful, he came to bring it to the miserable, the lonely, the cold and the poor.
In the myth of the perfect Christmas, we've lost sight of the fact that its sacredness lies in its imperfection - God was made flesh in an imperfect world, born in an imperfect cave so that he might be reborn into imperfect hearts. As in the art of kintsugi, it's the very brokenness of the vessel that allows it to be repaired with gold.
Happy Christmas Ray, Bell, Lain & HJ (again), wherever you nay be, wherever you may be worshipping! Christmas is a time for doing one's best to spread goodwill and cheer, and even if one doesn't entirely succeed we know The One who can.
DeleteGadjo
Cressida wishes you all a merry happy and holy Christmas Oh incidentally I love Christmas with carols, Santa ,reindeers, snow (just to look at on the tele i.e.) decorations, Christmas cake , Sydney rock oysters and all the other wonderful things. The birthday of Jesus is very very special and should be a happy time filled with generosity joy and kindness. This is what Jesus wants for us... to enjoy our time here on earth in peace and love , pray and communicate with him daily until we join him in the life hereafter (Heaven). That is what the nuns taught us and I am most grateful for it. Catholics are lucky.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear this, Cressida, have a wonderful Christmas!
DeleteGod bless you and yours. Have a blessed Chrissie Cressie.
DeleteNollaig chridheil : Nadolig llawen
ReplyDeleteScottish and Welsh too!
DeleteWell I love Christmas. I'm with Cressida on this. I have never had a bad Christmas, or at least one I've not enjoyed. My father had a simple view, miserable members of the family didn't get invited.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post on Christmas, Clive.
DeleteHere's the link for others:
https://parkinsonsisnotajourney.blogspot.com/2024/12/merry-christmas.html
Glad you liked it. Thanks for the plug.
DeleteAn interesting post, Clive, I hadn't heard the claim that Odin/Óðinn/Wōden was the origin of Santa before. I would have thought they'd be more of a parallel draw with Christ, though - the king of the gods hung on a tree with his side pierced with his own spear, sacrificing himself to gain wisdom that would benefit humanity. But the Norse myths primarily come down to us through the 12th Century writings of Snorri Sturluson, by which time Europe was well Christianised and it's unsurprising to see Christian parallels and themes retrospectively woven into them.
DeleteMany of the other 'pagan elements' of Christmas are so universal - hope, rebirth, the desire for light in the darkest time of the year, good overcoming evil - that it would be a surprise not to find them in pre-Christian festivals at this time of year. The idea that everything Christianity came up with must be unique to Christianity is fallacious, and undermined simply by a cursory read of the Bible.
As an aside, the Orthodox Church doesn't celebrate Christmas on a different date. When the Gregorian calendar was introduced, ten days were lost. The parts of the Orthodox Church which follow the old calendar still celebrate Christmas on 25 December, but because the dates have shifted their 25 December is our 6/7 January.
Above is from Lain, my Google account still won't let me post!
DeleteLain, as you may know, we have two Ukrainians staying with us. One follows the western date and one the eastern date. They themselves describe it as two different dates. But I am not denying your point, just saying that the two dates are so well embedded that the idea of the Eastern and Western churches celebrating on two different dates seems to be accepted without an awareness anymore of why.
DeleteI look forward to correcting them!!!!
Yes, it has effectively become two different dates in the modern world because nobody actually lives by the old calendar outside of the liturgical year. It's also hard to get one's head around the fact that something so fundamental as the date could be suddenly changed. There were heated debates in parliament, and (most likely apocryphal) tales of rioting, over the 11 'lost days' when the Gregorian calendar was introduced to Britain in 1752.
DeleteThis website https://www.ohrid-prolog.com/?lang=en lists the saints whose feats are celebrated each day. It shows the date and the date according to the Church calendar - today is 14 December, for example.
There is a legend that the Glastonbury Thorn, which it is said sprung from the staff of St. Joseph of Arimathea, blooms on Christmas Day - but on the 'proper' (that is, the old) date!
Isn't it time all the Orthodox churches updated their liturgical year? The Julian calendar is scientifically obsolete. As Clive mentioned, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has already switched and the Russian Orthodox Church retains the Julian Calendar.
DeleteIt would be nice, but it's probably not going to happen.
DeleteThere are two stumbling blocks, one is pan-Orthodox, the other specifically Russian. Firstly, the date of Easter is celebrated by all Orthodox churches according to the Julian calendar. This was the calendar in use when Nicaea decreed the formula by which all Christians should calculate Easter - moving to the Gregorian calendar would be, it is argued, contrary to the canons of that Council and could only be permitted by another Council.
Secondly, the churches that reckon the date of Christmas etc. by the Julian calendar are predominantly in ex-Soviet countries under/sympathetic to the Moscow Patriarchate. As you know, the Russian church considers itself as rightfully being the 'Third Rome' and is not about to change the way it calculates liturgical dates to align itself with a calendar introduced by a (to their mind, schismatic) pope, used by the West (especially now) and favoured by churches under the EP (especially with the current disputes over the Ukrainian Orthodox Church v the Orthodox Church of Ukraine).
As with many things ecclesial, this is in the desirable-but-too-difficult pile for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately, the ROC hates everyone, including other Orthodox. Equally Unfortunately, they also constitute 70% of the Orthodox, so I tend to agree, no reunification in the near future. But unity is not the measure
Deleteof good -- truth is. I just wish someone would tell the Vatican.
Mr. Neanderthal's link to Chesterton's work and Bell's comments about the Christmas card perfect Christmas reminded me of CS Lewis' essay Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus, purporting to be an examination of the strange festive habits of the barbarians of Niatirb (Britain, backwards). Even more relevant today than it was when it was published.
ReplyDeletehttps://episcopaldornochtain.org/2018/12/16/xmas-and-christmas-c-s-lewis/
Merry Christmas everybody 🍺
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas, Clive!
DeleteMerry Christmas ... (hic)
Delete