6th Day of Christmas and the Sunday Before Theophany

Not much in my posts for first 5 days of the Feast of the Nativity of Jesus has that cozy homley family Chistmas feel about it, has it? It is hard to imagine that all those deaths and all that sufferring has anything in common with the way Americans celebrate Christmas. I think that part of the reason for that is the different sources for the two ways Christmas is celebrated.

After the Puritans suppressed Christmas in England and America it was revived in those same countries as a secular holiday by Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, and the their Britainic Majesties Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

The famed American author Washington Irving published his "Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall" (A book I much love) that detailed the observance of Christmas in an English manor house in the early 19th century. It was all about holly and ivy and mulled wine and wassail and boar's heads and how one wealthy English nobleman's family celebrated Christmas. Much Fun! And though there was Church service in the book, the emphasis in Irving reporting of the service was on the participation of the family of the manor, not on He who was worshiped in the service.

Charles Dickens, a friend of Irving's,wrote his famous novella, A Christmas Carol in 1843. Many tens of thousands of copies of the book were sold to Christmas-starved masses, and Dickens' public readings in England and America were attended as well as any by the superstar performers of today. People even stood in long lines all night in freezing weather to buy tickets to his readings. But what was Christmas in this book? Was it the worship of the nativity of the incarnate God? Was it amazment that God and man were joined together in one person?

In A Christmas Carol (I have read the book and am a fan. Each year I even make my kids watch the 1951 movie version, staring Sir Alastair Sim.) there is no mention of the Nativity of Christ. There is no rejoicing in the Incarnation. In fact, the only allusion to the breathtaking reality of Christmas in Dickens' book is that on Christmas morning Scrooge "went to church". And that's it. Nothing else. But if the central Christian understanding of Christmas is missing from A Christmas Carol, what takes it's place? Friends and Family. Scrooge's nephew's Christmas party, and the Christmas dinner of the Cratchit family, and Fezziwigs company Christmas party (which resembled an idealized family celebration more than any office party) are the three most lively, colorful, and well-presented celebrations of Christmas in the novella.

The last of the three forces that lead to a revivial of the celebration of Christmas in America and England, though not a revival of the traditional Christian worship (do you remember a couple of years ago Christmas fell on Sunday and several extremely large churches cancelled services?) was the portrayal of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as an ideal faimly that gatherd around a christmas tree to open presents. Pictures of the British royal family posed around their Christmas tree were published in the Illustrated London News in 1848 and in the extremely popular American womens' magazine Godey's Ladys Book in 1850. This was a very influential magazine, being something like the Martha Stewart's Living and Good Housekeeping of the early 19th century. It is difficult to overstate how important these portrayals of the British Royal family were. They clinched the Family-Home-Christmas union that had been so greatly encouraged by Irving and Dickens.

But does any of that have anything to do with the Christian celebration of Christmas? Not really. In general, the Bible, and especially, the New Testament is ambiguous about family. After all, Jesus warns that children will betray thier parents, tells a man to not bother about burying his dead father, and when given an opportunity to affirm the familial relationship with Joseph's children and Mary his mother he chooses not to. And consider all that was going on the the relationships between the Prodigal Son, his father, and his older brother! And what needs to be said about wicked family of Herod, Archaleus, and Antipas?

Nevertheless, on this day, on the Sunday Before Theophany, which this year falls on the 6th Day of Christmas, the Orthodox Church remembers three of Jesus' relatives, David, Joseph, and James, in its hymnody. And in these hymns we see the purpose of family: To foster the love and worship of God, to make saints.


Troparion - Tone 2
Proclaim the wonder, O Joseph,
to David, the ancestor of God:
you saw a Virgin great with Child,
you gave glory with the shepherds,
you worshipped with the Magi,
you received the news from the angel.
Pray to Christ God to save our souls!

Kontakion - Tone 3
Today godly David is filled with joy;
Joseph and James offer praise.
The glorious crown of their kinship with Christ fills them with great joy.
They sing praises to the One ineffably born on earth,
and they cry out: "O Compassionate One, save those who honor You!"

Think about this: In Jesus immediate family there are His Mother Mary, St. Elizabeth, St. Zacharias, St. Joseph, St. Jude, St. James, St. John the Foreruner and several others. But this is not the only saintly family in the history of the Church. Think about St. Macrina the Younger in the fourth century. Her parents and her grandmother are saints, and her little brothers, whom she educated, are the famous bishops Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa . And consider St. Timothy. Didn't saint Paul commend St. Timothy's mother and grandmother for their raising of Timothy to love and obey God? This is the Christian understanding of the purpose of family. The Church is ful of these saintly families. There isn't space on my blog to write them all.

But the Christian understanding of Christmas is not tied to our own families. It is much grander that that. It is firmly anchored in the family of God. Because of Christ's Incarnation he has become one of us and is filliated to us (2 Cor. 8:9). He is our brother as much as he is St. James' brother. (Romans 8:17) And like James and David and Joseph, the glorious crown of kinship with Christ fills us with great joy.