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Rev. Joey N. Welsh No. 051: Christmas isn't over yet Another Angle, the occasional musings of a Kentucky pastor: This article, new to ColumbiaMagazine.com readers, was first published in the Hart County News-Herald on 1 January 2006. To read other essays by the author, enter "Another Angle," or "Rev. Joey N. Welsh" (pen name for Rev. Rob Stout) in the searchbox for a list of links by The Rev. Joey N. Welsh Christmas Isn't Over Yet We prepare for Christmas for a long time, and then the holiday comes and ends so fast. New Year's Day is here, and Christmas is already history, it seems to us. Radio stations play Christmas music intensively on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, then it's back to music as usual. Stores put out their Christmas-related items in the run-up to the holiday as soon as they get rid of their Halloween masks and candy, but by December 26 they are doing their post-Christmas clearance sales. In truth, though, we are still in the thick of Christmas according to the traditions of Western Christianity. Advent is the church season leading up to Christmas, marked in many churches by Advent wreathes and candles. Then Christmas Eve and Christmas Day come (for us that was last weekend), but tradition decrees that the final chapter of Christmas is not yet written. The church season of Christmas lasts until January 6, when tradition takes note of the arrival of the Wise Men, the Magi, and the beginning of the church season of Epiphany. The term Epiphany comes from a word in the Greek language of the New Testament meaning appearance or miraculous manifestation. Those twelve days between Christmas Day and Epiphany are what many Christians observe as Christmas, and in many parts of the world gifts are not even exchanged until the final night, in recognition of the gifts brought by the Magi to the Christ Child. So, relax; if you haven't put away your Christmas decorations yet, you have tradition on your side. And if you have put away your creche already, then you packed the nativity figures away before the Magi even had a chance to arrive. During some periods of history the celebration and revelry during these twelve days was so extreme that Christmas celebrations were sometimes criticized (for good reason) as a time of bawdy, drunken debauchery having little to do with the Christ Child. Sometimes people were a bit too merry at Christmas, and the very terms merry and merry-making are attached to that history of seasonal depravity. To this very day, many Christians in England wish people a Happy Christmas, because the phrase Merry Christmas still is laden with a connotation of drunkenness. This season of twelve days is what that carol The Twelve Days of Christmas references. I have noticed a lot of stories on the internet during recent years that seek to interpret this carol, saying that it was born in a time of religious persecution of Roman Catholics in 16th Century England. Each item in the carol, we are told, stands for a Catholic religious doctrine, and the carol was used as a sort of secret code of belief. (For example, the partridge in a pear tree supposedly stands as a symbol for Jesus Christ, while the two turtle doves represent the Old and New Testaments, etc.) Actually, there is no historical evidence to back up this religious interpretation of the carol's lyrics, and there is nothing in the so-called Catholic beliefs that differs distinctly from Protestant belief. Though the carol has been around for centuries, it was not even published until 1863. It evidently began as a fun memory game used by circles of people to note the season of Christmas, and in Victorian times it was popular as a parlor game. It never was used to transmit doctrine, and those interpretations of this carol didn't appear until the late 20th Century. That internet story seems nice, it is just not rooted in any real history. Likewise, I have seen stories (and there are even similar books on the market) claiming that candy canes were invented by an Ohio or Indiana candy maker in the mid-1800's. The story goes that the canes were shaped so they would look like the letter J, for Jesus. Further, the story says, the white background stands for Jesus' unblemished purity, while the red stripes were added to stand for the sacrificial blood of Jesus. Actually, plain white candy canes have been around for centuries, at least since the 1600's, well before any Midwestern candy maker came along. Their shape originally represented a shepherd's crook. And stripes were not added until mechanized candy machines started mass-producing candy canes in the 20th Century. There are not even any existing illustrations of striped candy canes dating before the early 1900's. The stripes were added for decoration, not symbolism. The stories and books about the Twelve Days of Christmas, candy canes, and religious symbolism didn't even begin appearing before the 1990's. Not everything that is distributed over the internet is true, and not every nice story with an authentic-sounding historical context attached is actually based in real history. I suppose we can think of things in any way we wish and use them as teaching tools in whatever manner we like, but we shouldn't spread false histories about them and pretend that those histories are the truth. Meanwhile, the truth does remain that we are still in the midst of Christmas, at least according to the traditions of the ages. Enjoy Christmas while it still lasts. The season doesn't end until Epiphany arrives on this coming Friday. The Wise Men haven't quite gotten there yet, so continue to have a Merry Christmas, but try not to be debauched or depraved about it! E-mail: joey_n_welsh@hotmail.com This story was posted on 2010-01-03 09:01:37
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