Terry Mattingly has a good article up online: Church calendar Christmas Crunch.
You know all the ruckus about megachurches being closed on Christmas, a Sunday, this year? Seems its been a problem all along.
"Going to church on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day was something the Catholics did and all the people in those other churches that followed the church calendar," said John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College."For most Protestants, Christmas was about being with your family. Churches weren't open on Christmas, but nobody thought much about it -- unless Christmas fell on a Sunday. Then things could get complicated."
This is precisely what happened this year, of course, when some of America's largest evangelical churches made headlines by canceling their Sunday services on Christmas Day, urging the faithful to stay home with their families. The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and many other news organizations said this was an ironic decision in a year when conservatives were attacking any merchants and government leaders who refused to "put Christ back in Christmas."
It seemed, said Witvliet, that "part of the problem was that headline that everyone was using -- 'Churches Close On Christmas.' That just seemed so counter-intuitive to people who have never really given much thought to the problems that churches have year after year trying to negotiate their Christmas schedules so that things work out for their families. ...
"But this is old news. This problem has been getting worse for decades."
And how did the problem arise?
Like it or not, the old Christmas traditions built on extended families and small, neighborhood churches have been shredded by decades of interstate highways, divorces, Thanksgiving shopping blitzes, mass media, secular parties and cheap airplane tickets.Modern clergy find it hard to get the numbers to add up.
How is a church music minister going to handle a difficult Christmas cantata when only one or two tenors or sopranos remain in town? What are elementary-grade Sunday school leaders supposed to do when most of their Nativity pageant angels, shepherds and wise men have been air-lifted to distant zip codes to visit various grandparents or ski resorts?
Well, you just change the liturgical date for Christmas to match your parishioners jam-packed schedules.
Those Christmas concerts that used to be scheduled for Sundays around Dec. 22 or 23 began drifting earlier and earlier in the month. At many churches, organizations and, especially, Christian schools the Christmas season is all but over by Dec. 15 or 16 or earlier. All that's left is frantic shopping and the rites of travel, food, family, fellowship and television. "At some point, the whole month of December turns into Christmas and people just do what they have to do to jam everything in there," said Witvliet.
And the traditional Christmas observation? Fuhgeddabowdit.
And what about observing the traditional Christmas season itself, which begins on Dec. 25th and continues through Epiphany on Jan. 6th?Posted by Clifton at December 19, 2005 08:31 AM | TrackBack"Even talking about the traditional 12 days is like asking people to run uphill against everything that's going on around them," said Witvliet. "Most of what happens in the church today is, sadly, being driven by the calendar of the shopping mall. That's how people order their lives."
As I noted on GetReligion, Antiochians are told by their website to make this same choice. I wish we'd all lay off the prots on this as long as our own website says
December 24,Saturday evening: Orthros (Matins) and Liturgy of St. Basil the Great instead of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
OR December 25, Sunday Morning: Orthros (Matins) and Liturgy of St. Basil the Great instead of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
Note the "OR" there. It's all in caps on the Antiochian website too. We are to make this choice based only on what works for us in each parish. You may do a Saturday evening OR a Sunday morning. The Official Guide does not allow for both - I know that some Antiochian parishes are not following the liturgical guide, but that's another issue. It claims to be the sole source for liturgical practice in the AOA.
Forgive my rant, but this is one drum no one in Antioch should be beating - especially when you note how edited the Liturgical Guide is compared to "full" Byzantine or Slavic practice. I know we can edit our rites, but point of fact since the EP said make everything shorter so as to be appealing most all the rest of "world Orthodoxy" has done the same.
Posted by: Huw Raphael at December 19, 2005 03:59 PMHuw:
Your note is well-taken. My gripe here in this post, however, is not about the Prots not celebrating Christmas in a public Sunday service, but the hold secular concerns have taken on the Protestant observance of Christmas.
I had started a separate post to encourage Protestant observance of the 12 days of Christmas, precisely to afford them an opportunity to "take back" the Christmas that is increasingly be stolen from them. But I haven't posted it yet. It needs more editing.
In any case, I guess I don't see your own gripe clearly enough, Huw. Doesn't the rubrics forbid celebrating Holy Eucharist more than once on the same altar in a 24-hour period--sundown to sundown? Isn't that what this directive is addressing? I know our parish is doing the midnight divine liturgy, though liturgically, Sunday begins at sundown.
Perhaps I misunderstand it altogether.
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at December 19, 2005 04:09 PMI'm not sure about the 24 hour rule, although I've heard of it often enough - I think it's a liturgical rule and not a clock rule: still not 24 hours between the Saturday morning Liturgy of the Eve and the Saturday Midnight services. Nor is there 24 hours between paschal liturgies on Saturday Morning and Saturday night.
The "full" Christmas is Saturday Morning, plus a vigil (Vespers/Compline/Matins/First Hour) on Saturday Night and then a Liturgy on Christmas Day. Although some have told me that it's more along the western style of a total of 3 liturgies.
But my gripe is that all modern orthodox have made allowances for the culture in our worship: unless one belongs to one of the semi-schismatic groups. We give the blessed bread to the non-orthodox, the services are edited for speed and time ("liturgical midnight" is not at 8pm!) We assume baptism outside the church is ok. Our monasteries move the liturgical hours around so as to meet the needs of the communities. Some parishes even have their Christmas trees up already. Some would insist that the foremost allowance made was the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.
So... pointing out that the prots are making mistakes because they're making allowances per se seems rather like "Hello, kettle? This is the pot: you're black." It might be better to say "the wrong allowances" but again, don't know. I note especially Antiochians because the official liturgical practices are published on the website: it becomes evident when a local parish is side-stepping Mtr P's liturgical directives in favour of what might be called "traditionalism" but really is just more "making changes b/c what the community wants".
Posted by: Huw Raphael at December 19, 2005 05:14 PM