Twelve days of Christmas

Millions of Americans are waking up this morning with a hangover. I don't mean the kind that comes from having too many libations, I mean that empty feeling that often comes after the presents have been opened and the turkeys and pies eaten. The "day after" can also be a time of sadness as families brought together by the holiday say their goodbyes and head for home. All of this leads to what's come to be known as the "post-holiday blues." Google it and you'll come up with all kinds of suggestions on how to cope. Gabe Huck writes, "We take our Christmas with lots of sugar. And we take it in a day." After the sugar rush comes the inevitable crash.

It doesn't have to be that way though, especially for Christians. For centuries believers of various traditions have celebrated Christmas, not as a one-and-done blow-out, but a 12-day festival leading up to Epiphany on January 6. For those of us accustomed to cramming everything into one day there's great value in getting back to this venerable notion of keeping Christmas as a longer period of celebration, feasting and reflection.

This year I've been enjoying Living the Christian Year by Bobby Gross, director of graduate and faculty ministries for InterVarsity. Gross was raised in an evangelical church that placed all the emphasis on Christmas Day and Easter, but for whatever reason ignored the rest of the church calendar. He's written a helpful book that explains the origin of the liturgical calendar to those of us who didn't grow up with it and offers practical suggestions for making it part of our daily lives, including suggested scripture readings and devotionals.

During this time of the year we hear a lot about "keeping Christ in Christmas" but how many of us actually challenge the dominant cultural assumptions about how Christmas should be celebrated? An example of how not to challenge those assumptions is the campaign mounted this year by a prominent Christian organization to rate major retailers on how "Christmas-friendly" they are. Gross argues that orienting our lives around the church calendar, instead of the secular calendar, is a way for Christians to enter more fully into God's drama of creation and redemption. And it's a way to be truly counter-cultural.

Our commercialized culture will quickly move on now that December 25 has come and gone, but the church doesn't have to follow. Gross writes, "We can treat these twelve days differently. We can live as if we have arrived on a spiritual island after a long and arduous trip. Take a deep breath now and settle in for the time being. Let yourself relish where you are in the year—and in the Story." (pp. 71-72) In other words, be counter-cultural. Stay in the Christmas mode.