What to Make of these Swirling Holiday Seasons
How the months from autumn to winter echo a living Gospel
This Weekend Edition of Ecstatic features Rich Christman
Where do we find ourselves in these holiday months? October. November. December. Increasingly, I see a growing consensus that these three months are the best of the year. In the American cultural imagination—or at least in the online circles I wade in—they seem to have recently eclipsed the summer months of June, July, and August as the most anticipated and planned for season.
The appreciation is due in part to the sense that the mystique and drama of autumn is more interesting than the predictable blaze of summer, as well as the emotional import of the extended “Holiday Season” of these months. The themed, colorful, flavorful days that range from pre-Halloween to New Year’s Day seems to be hogged unfairly from the rest of the calendar, squirreled away in this darkening last act.
In the debate of when the Christmas season begins (is it right after Thanksgiving? December 1? November 1? The moment department stores begin playing carols over the P.A.?), I find myself asking a different question. The consistent string of holidays, with patches of “ordinary time” wedged between, really begins the first of October as we begin to celebrate the harvest. There is a clear shift that occurs between the days of late summer and the start of October that initiates a precipitous plunge that ends in the New Year. This precipitation begins with Halloween—a perhaps controversial celebration among some Christians, but one that is a key part of the historic Christian calendar as well as the fullness of the Christian story. Its darkness and death give way to great light and new birth by the end of the old year. The common celebrations that take place in October, November, and December paint a vivid picture of the narrative of true myth—not only to the trained liturgist but also intuitively to all who experience them. We are preached to, in some ways deeper than through words, of the fallen bliss of the summer garden, the inescapable and present darkness of this age, the fellowship and communion that binds us against the outer cold, and the inexorable hope of the return of the Light, warmth, and the new age to come.
Beginning with the recently passed Hallowmass. Hallowtide. Allsaintstide. All Saints. All Souls. Halloween. October 31 as celebrated in the West, is the beginning of the historic triduum of days of memento mori—to consider our deaths—and to “hail the victorious dead”, as King Theoden of Rohan would put it. Hallow’s Mass Eve gives way to All Saints Day where those the historic Christian Church has identified as heroic men and women after Christ’s way are remembered, studied, venerated, and sometimes impersonated by children in dress for sweets. Falling from its original purpose as Western culture has moved away from historic masses and hallows, we have allowed Halloween to become a celebration at best of childhood pretending, a sense of adventure, and acquisition of candy, and at worst, a celebration of devils, witchcraft, murder, death, horror, and depravity. The day is fallen, yes, but not lost. The lush, warm protection of summer has given way to October. The fall. To those awake to the unseen world as revealed in Scripture, we feel the weight of Satan’s efforts and his small victories on the Earth approaching October 31. We pretend we are something we are not. We put ourselves through fictional haunts with ghouls we barely believe in. We deck our lawns with the iconography of death. We feel for a moment a fraction of what reality would be if Christ were not King.
Thanksgiving. The weeks press on. All the leaves fall. An American holiday celebrated in different times and with different origins in the United States and Canada, but in either, one that is rooted in gratitude to God for bounty, providence, and mere survival in a harsh, difficult, and deadly world. Thanksgiving, the modern celebration, has evolved to include a clear focus on family, friends, fellowship, food, (and in the US, football). All of these things are good gifts of God to aid us in our journey through this harrowing world, poisoned, distorted, and rent by evil. Thanksgiving can be seen as the first strike back in a world polluted by Halloween. We give thanks, we break bread, we share with family and friends that we otherwise rarely see. We play, we drink, we pray, we rest. Thanksgiving is a Sabbath in life’s embattled week.
Hark, the Herald Angels sing! Glory to the newborn King! It is the bitter cold of a new winter. The death and slumber that heralded the fall of the summer age have now taken the land. In this darkness however, “the world has seen a great light”. As Matthew writes, “... for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned”. The light of Christmas. Like Hallowmas, Christmas is a historic Christian celebration—this time of the mass of Christ the Messiah himself. While Easter celebrates and commemorates the moment of Christ’s specific crushing of death and its power in his resurrection, the battle is already won at Christmas, at the birth of the hypostatic God-Man Jesus as the perfect Passover lamb. The fulfillment of all things.
There is no season more joyous than Christmas. Every darkness presented by October is refuted in turn by December. “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it” writes Saint John. Halloween can kick against the pricks, but the Light is purer than its darkness is black. As the Ghost of Christmas Past questions Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol when the fallen miser tries to lid him like a candle, “would you so soon put out the light I give?”. As much as Scrooge tries, he cannot. How much more as the reader of A Christmas Carol do we understand the necessity of the Spirit’s brightness after we have already seen Scrooge’s dark? How much more, to feel the light and joy of Christmas do you, Christian, need to experience Halloween’s pitch?
When we attempt to separate ourselves from the truly fallen nature of the world we live in, it becomes all too easy to forget our participation in the ultimate narrative. As John Proctor, the broken but honest Puritan cries in the end of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, “God does not need my name nailed upon the church. God knows how black my sins are!” God does. Proctor does. Do we? Outside of the culturally fading “hallowmas” of Ash Wednesday, do we think on our own death, and what makes it so? Allowing ourselves the fullness of the season’s climb out of the pit makes the brightness of Christmas all the brighter. Peace on Earth and Mercy mild. God and sinners reconciled.
New Year’s Day. With Christ comes the victory. The restoration of all things and a new world to come. This is what we hope for. The freshness and hope of a New Year’s Day cap off the three months that we have come to call the broader Holiday season. October 1, when the leaves in the north begin to turn fiery, and the blanket of summer’s humidity is cut, to January 1, the cold clear start of a New Year. Celebrate the Lord each day, but celebrate all the more viscerally, all the more lively, all the more artistically, all the more fully in these unique days. It should be noted that despite this artful interpretation, the first Sunday of Advent is understood in the Christian Year as the first day of the year, while the previous Sunday, Christ the King Sunday, is known as the last Sunday of the Church Year.
In October’s growing darkness and chill we remember the grip of death. The prevalence of evil. The depths to which the prince of the power of the air will seep his vile energies into this fallen world. In November we fight back by our imago dei and by the grace of God against the dangers and cold of the world. In December we celebrate the birth of the awaited King. On New Year’s Day, we celebrate a future where all is clean, all is hope, all is restored, and death is but a fading memory.
Rich Christman
Teacher & Chairman of Forefront Festival
Rich is a public school English teacher and drama director committed to the cultivation of beauty in a darkening world. He is the chairman of Forefront Festival, a nonprofit that seeks to equip and encourage creators in the Church to make excellent art in light of their Creator. Thoughts on this essay? Leave a like and share in the comments!
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Excellent work, Rich.