1. Reflect on Mary as Mother of God. Read up on Marian theology. There are also many beautiful spiritual reflections on Mary’s role in salvation history.
2. Meditate on the Incarnation. Aside from the romantic image of the baby Jesus born in a stable, what does it mean for God to take on human nature, to become a baby and a child with human parents, to have to grow up, to live a human life? What does this Mystery do for human nature?
3. Meditate on the theological virtue of Love. Read, for example, Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, God is Love
4. Turn your prayer toward praise and worship. Praise is giving God love and glory for the good things He does – like the Incarnation. Worship is giving God love and glory just because He is God. Praise & worship music is a great help in this kind of prayer. With or without music, just lift your heart to God filled with love. Of course, books such as Beginning Contemplative Prayer can also help train you in this beautiful form of prayer.
5. Speaking of praise and worship, attend Eucharistic Adoration! What a perfect way to give praise and worship to God Among Us (Emmanuel)!
6. Study the lyrics and origins of Christmas carols! Many of them – Oh Holy Night (my favorite), It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Silent Night, etc. – have deep theological significance worthy of prayerful reflection. What a beautiful way to pray!
7. As a New Year’s Resolution you can actually keep, take an easy step to increasing your knowledge about your faith. The Lighthouse Catholic Media CD of the Month Club brings some of the best Catholic teachers right to your mailbox every month for just $5 a month. Even if you don’t have time to read a book or take a class, you can just pop a CD into a player in the car, at work or at home and listen while you’re on the go.

So what are you going to do to make Christmas beautiful? Add to the list – share your ideas below!

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It’s Not Over on Christmas Day – It’s Just Getting Started!

It’s the fourth week of Advent. How are you doing on your Advent observation? Many Catholics use Advent as a time for spiritual reading and reflection, which is great! I love that From the Abbey has played a role in that for some of you by providing your spiritual reading material.

A good temperature reading is to ask yourself what your attitude toward Christmas is right now. Are you getting excited? I know, it’s been a long time since you’ve had the excitement of a child for Christmas day. But as we mature in our faith, that excitement should be growing deeper rather than getting weaker as we come to an ever-greater understanding of the significance of the Incarnation. However, if you’re like most of us (including me most years), you’re probably more exhausted than excited. While the the worldly preparations of Christmas and the shopping season are good as far as they go, when we let them overwhelm our spiritual preparation, the excitement we should have for the coming of Christ dies.

Whether or not you were able to take the time this year for some extra prayer and reflection, the end of Advent doesn’t end your opportunity! Did you know that Christmas is also a great time to deepen your spiritual life? Most of us know that Christmas is not just a single feast day in the Church calendar, but a season. However, too often we think of the Christmas season as beginning on the first day of Advent and ending on Christmas day. Christmas is actually the beginning of the Christmas season! In fact Christmas “day” – the feast of Christmas – is actually an octave! That’s right – eight days of full-fledged celebration! What a shame if by Christmas day we’re sick of celebrating and consider ourselves done. But that’s not all! The Christmas season spreads beyond the octave of Christmas through the Feast of the Presentation, giving us over two weeks of actual Christmas.

So, how are you doing this Advent season? Are you excited, or just plain exhausted? Leave your comments below!

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What really got me thinking about it was watching a couple of Christmas specials with my children. The first show we watched was the modern movie Elf and the second was the Christmas classic, The Year Without a Santa Clause. Now, I don’t think there is anything wrong with these shows in themselves. But what struck me as I watched them was the Santa mythos that they promote.

In this mythos, Santa represents the belief in the unreal. To use Santa’s own words (in Year Without a Santa Clause), “I believe in Santa Clause as much as I believe in any dream, and where will people find happiness if they lose their dreams?” Furthermore, Santa receives his power (much like Tinkerbell) by the belief of the people. This belief, along with a vague concept of “peace and goodwill,” are what constitute the “Christmas Spirit,” which is fundamentally the meaning of Christmas. Not only is Jesus not “the reason for the season,” God doesn’t even play a role. When Mrs. Clause in Year Without a Santa Clause “goes straight to the top” to straighten out an argument between “Freeze Miser” and “Heat Miser,” she goes to see Mother Nature.

If the Santa tradition was just a child’s story about a mysterious, jolly figure who leaves presents for good children in the middle of the night, I would have no problem joining in the fun. But the Santa mythos has become much more than that, or perhaps much less.

Like many Catholic families, my wife and I are considering the alternatives. I am leaning toward telling the story of Saint Nicholas of Myra (the original Santa Clause), and leaving a few mysterious gifts under the tree, leaving my children to wonder if Saint Nicholas had really visited them. We would then give Christmas presents in celebration of Jesus’ “birthday” – from us and from the family rather than from Santa. Then, when my children begin to figure out that the gifts from St. Nicholas are actually from us, we could much more easily explain about imitation of the saints and receiving the true gifts from Heaven. Hmmm . . .

It’s just a thought, but the more I think about it the more I’m warming to the idea. The Santa mythos is just too sterilized. Why not offer my children a real “myth” that naturally leads to the greatest Myth¹ of all?

End Notes

¹The original meaning of the word myth is a story that tells a culture’s foundational story — not necessarily a fictional story.

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