An Elder at our church this morning wished everyone, “Merry Christmas!”
I’m not Catholic, but for a number of years I hung around with the Sisters of the Holy Names at Marylhurst… The title of my blog comes from the Liturgical Calendar. After Pentecost, and before Advent, the calendar is in Ordinary Time. I feel as if most of my life has been lived in Ordinary Time.
Christmas is on December 25th. It’s probably appropriate to use the greeting above on Christmas Eve. Christmas ends on January 6th, with the Feast of the Epiphany. That’s when the guys above arrived in Bethlehem. Followed by, but not celebrated, is The Massacre of the Innocents; see Chronicles in Ordinary Time 201: Massacre of the Innocents
I dislike this time of year.
The Creator of the entire Universe did not create a single cell, implanted into the womb of a teenaged girl, so that we could all shop. The Creator did not enter time and space in the form of Jesus in order that we might have another excuse to spend money. Granted, we live in a Market Economy; Black Friday is traditionally the time when retail stores finally make a profit—going from ‘in the red’ to ‘in the black’.
My wife and I don’t ‘do Christmas’. The Christmas decorations we have, are present all the time. We stopped ‘doing Christmas’ when my Mom died. She came to live with us on Christmas Eve for the last year of her life; she went to her eternal Home, one year later. After the morticians left, we went to the Christmas Eve service at the church we belonged to back then. People were surprised; for us, being with our Church family was the most natural thing to do, at such a time.
We ‘did Christmas’ when our children lived with us. There is a ‘magical’ element when one mixes children and Christmas. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra has been attached to children and Christmas for the last Millennium.
As humans eventually do, we mess up the meaning of the Story.
The Creator entered time and space in the form of Jesus in order that we might learn how to live. I saw the image below, posted today.
This is not how we are supposed to live.
Modern holy family by Eric Fitzpatrick
There will be children in cages, at our Southern Border, this Christmas. They probably will not see any gifts, nor Christmas trees. They may see another young person beside them, dying in the ‘care’ of ICE.
[Last] month, new government data shows…an unprecedented 69,550 migrant children held in U.S. government custody over the past year, enough infants, toddlers, kids and teens to overflow the typical NFL stadium. That’s more children detained away from their parents than any other country, according to United Nations researchers. And it’s happening even though the U.S. government has acknowledged that being held in detention can be traumatic for children, putting them at risk of long-term physical and emotional damage.
https://apnews.com/015702afdb4d4fbf85cf5070cd2c6824
I know people who simply do not care. They have told me that these people don’t belong here anyway. Our President, in this last year, has announced that ‘we are full’. Food rots in fields because there are no pickers to harvest the crops. And our President has hired undocumented workers at his golf facilities for years.
We should be ashamed.
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Chronicles in Ordinary Time 