Experience Mass in a Whole New Way

(cover © Patrick A. Jones, 2008)

Coming this Lent, 2009, an illustrated children's story missal that will help your kids enter Mass, and reveal it to you in a whole new way! One previewer (a children's catechist) said:

"I'll never experience Mass the same way again!"

Please contact Mother's House Publishing for further information.

How do You Celebrate Christ's Mass?

What? Christmas lasts more than one day? You mean there really are 12 days of Christmas? All the way through Epiphany? Wow! It sure is grand to be Catholic! Grin.

Our family, and many of those we know, struggle with how to live Advent as real preparation for Christmas, and Christmas as a time of celebration and feasting for 12 whole days. The purpose of this post is to share ideas about how to celebrate Christmas -- the full season long.

I like to use the creative process (I'll cover that in more detail in a future post) to help with strategic visioning. It's how I figure out what I want for lunch and how to orchestrate social and theological revolutions (surprisingly, I'm not kidding). Grin. Anyway, we start by naming what we want to create:

Christmas Tide Vision
A Christmas Tide celebration feast with family and friends which starts sundown Christmas Eve and goes solid tilt through Epiphany.

Of course there are a few things which we have to be aware of because our culture make realizing that grand vision a real challenge:

Current Reality as it Relates to Christmas Tide

• The commercialization of Christmas, which now begins just after St. Valentines Day. Sardonic grin.
• People seem to think Christmas begins December 1st. When is the season of Christmas parties? Nearly all are in Advent, before the feast has begun. When do the Christmas treats arrive in the workplace? Yup. Same schedule. Actually bring in Christmas treats during Christmastide and be accused of bringing in your leftovers (before I was disabled, I tried this, so I know!). And lots of folks have somehow come to believe the 12 days of Christmas refer to the 12 days leading up the Christmas rather than the 12 days after Christmas. We've had a struggle trying to convert our daughter's 12 chained countdown made as a school craft to being used during Christmas rather than before.
• Want to cut a Christmas tree in the National Forest Christmas Eve? Nope. Illegal. Have to do it by the second weekend in December.
• Christmas ends for most people at midnight, December 25. New Years is a separate and almost entirely secular celebration without any attempt to link it with the Christmas season.

But this is not supposed to be a gripe and groan session (hard to tell, aye?). Sometimes, howver, that's what current reality as it relates to our vision is. Now the questions becomes, how are we going to make this Christmas Tide 2-week Celebration happen?! Here's how we celebrate, starting with Advent. Much of what we do comes from a variety of German and Scottish family traditions as well as the marvilous book "To Dance with God" by Gertrud Nelson).

Advent

Christmas Eve
Breakfast: German: fresh baked pretzels and meat and cheese pretzle roll.
Decorate for Christmas: we do this as a family (because of my disability we don't have enough hands otherwise) -- Adding bows to greenery, Christmas decorations throughout the house, ornimants onto the tree.

Christmas Eve Dinner: Brats, red cabbage, potatoe salad and other German fare.
Kris Kringle brings the presents durring story time away from the Christmas room (family room), which is left dark.

La Posada: Krist Kindle bell calls us to gather for the La Posada. One of the lassies is Mary, and she is given baby Jesus to carry in her "belly" (looks recarkably like a pocket, while she, Joseph, the donkey, and the angel go seeking a place to spend the night. After the inn keeper of the first two stops refuses them, the third offers them the manger. The Christmas tree lights go up and we sing "Joy to the World" as Mary puts baby Jesus in the manger and Mary and Joseph arrive at the stable (reverse this).

Carols, Presents, Christmas Mass: More Christmas carols are sung. Then we break out the Christmas cookies. Then we open one or two presents each and its play time for the lassies to enjoy their new gifts. Barbara and the lassies go to afternoon, evening, or Christmas morning Mass, depending on what works best that year (I can't go because of my brain injury).

Christmas Day
After getting up: sing more Christmas carols (we do this each day before opening the presents for that day). Stockings were filled by Krist Kindle yesterday and are pilfered through now.
Scottish breakfast: porrage with cream, honey, and Scotch, black pudding, sausage, bacon, eggs, grapefruit etc... The rest of the day is a family day, with a walk, games, stories, etc... With a simple dinner so we don't have to cook that evening (feast foods happen throughout the season, but this frees Christmas day of the burden of extensive food prep.

Each Day of Christmas
Early morning: sing carols (and move the wise men, who began their journey Christmas Eve -- they arrive on Epiphany) and open a present (sometimes we all get one, sometimes it is a family present). This helps the feast last, helps each gift be more fully appreciated, and helps the focus of Christmas be Jesus, love, and relationship.

Feast foods, time off from work (as much as possible), gathering with family and friends (we try to not do this much during Advent)

In addition we add some thing on specific days:

New Years Eve - Holy Family - Family Reconciliation Service (I post more about this later), and typical New Years Eve things (we celebrate New Years on Scottish time so it's not a late night for lassies or brain injured.)

Epiphany: Wise men arrive to "We Three Kings" via procession through the house, Special presents saved for last day of Christmas Tide (sometimes related to travel), home blessing with "20 C+M+B 07" written over the inside of our main door (for Casper, Melkiar, and Baltazhar).

After Epipahny: clean up. Sing O Tannembaum, dance around the tree one last time, take everthing down in cleaning up for entering into ordinary time.

How do you join in the celebration of Christmas Tide? Use "comments" to share your traditions!

Merry Christ's Mass!
Patrick

Advent: How do you prepare for Christmas?

Advent is an odd season. We want it to be a time of quiet reflection, but I think at its best it is a hurried season of upheaval preparations. We are, after all, pregnant with Jesus, who when born among us, is miraculously both human and divine -- exactly what we were intended to be when God created us. Oh, how short of our potential we fall! I think we sense this, and know that Jesus' birth will help transform us more fully into who God created us to be -- which will rock and upheave our world.

If you've been an expectant mother or father, remember all that time you had for quiet reflection? Me neither! Any father or mother to be can tell you pregnancy is hardly a time of quiet reflection. If you've been blessed to go through it, you know. There are all sorts of core questions. Will I be a good mother (or father)? How can we possibly care for a baby? Can I really be that responsible? And of course these questions are going on while we daftly rush about trying to make things ready last minute because nine months is such a long time we didn't think to get started sooner. Grin.

Amidst the chaos lies the wonder. We long for a chance to sit down, but we know we won't get it for years to come, once the infant is born. We certainly can't sit down now, there's already too much to be done to get ready!

Advent is wonderful for us as Catholic families. It helps us experience the sacred holiness hidden in the hurry and rush of everyday life: caring for each other through the labors and preparations of meals, work, home and car maintenance, discipline, fun and games, laughter and tears, finances, dog training, soccer and ballet schedules... God reveals himself to us through the chaos of it all. Advent is a season to remember to see God in the activity of preparing -- and in family life we are always preparing!

Here is a brief version of what we do during Advent:

Decoration
We put up greenery without bows (they arrive Christmas Eve).

Baking and food prep
Cookie baking happens throughout but we wait to eat them until Christmas. We've been known to make a plum pudding too.

St. Nicholas Day, December 6
We put our boots out the night before and find a few tasty treats (turned green by stinky feet) and chocolate gold coins, and a breakfast fruit.

Christmas Tree Cutting
We cut our Christmas tree the second week of December, put it up singing "Oh Tannenbaum!". The tree receives lights, which we turn on in anticipation of Christ's light being born anew in our lives, but it waits for ornaments until Christmas Eve.

Creche
Our creche is put out to tell the story of what happened before Christmas. We put it so the lassies can play with it throughout Advent -- this leads to some amazing roll playing. One daughter is baby Jesus, the other Mary, which gives us an opportunity to talk about how baby Jesus really is in us and in the wise choices we make. The animals are in the stable, the manger (which is a food trough) is there empty. Mary and Joseph are placed away from the manger, traveling toward Bethlehem from a different room. Baby Jesus and the wise men are nowhere to be found.

Making the Manger soft for Baby Jesus
When we "catch" our daughters making wise choices, they get to add a piece of hay to the manger, helping make it soft for baby Jesus to arrive.

St. Lucy's Day, Dec. 13th
We have a candle light procession round the kitchen to a breakfast table of sticky buns.

Advent Calendars and Candles
The lassies each count down the 25 days to Christmas with German Chocolate Advent Calendars. We burn Advent candles, with the person lighting them saying "Come, Lord Jesus!" and everyone else responding "Come quickly!". One set of godparents sends crafts and chocolate for each week of Advent, along with an age appropriate scripture reflection.

Song and Stories
Our Advent song is "Come oh come Emmanuel," which we sing before our home religious education each Sunday as well as at many meal times. We read J.R.R. Tolkien's "Letters from Father Christmas" (and they get a letter from Fr. Christmas on Christmas morning). Jan Brett has several delightful books about Christmas that are grand Scandinavian fun.

How do you celebrate Advent? Add a comment and share what rituals and traditions you cherish, or with you did?

Want to also share your Christmas traditions?

Come, Lord Jesus!
(All) Come Quickly!

Patrick