In the Christian tradition of both east and west, the twelve days of Christmas
refer to the period from Christmas Day to Theophany. The days leading up to
Christmas were for preparation; a practice affirmed in the Orthodox tradition
by the Christmas fast that runs from November 15 to Christmas day. The
celebration of Christmas did not begin until the first of the twelve days.
As our culture became more commercialized,
the period of celebration shifted from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day. Christmas
celebration increasingly conforms to the shopping cycle while the older
tradition falls by the wayside. It’s an worrisome shift because as the
tradition dims, the knowledge that the period of preparation imparted
diminishes with it.
Our Orthodox traditions
— from fasting cycles to worship –exist to teach us how to live in Christ. The
traditions impart discipline. These disciplines are never an end in themselves
but neither can life in Christ be sustained apart from them.
The traditions only make sense only when
they have the Gospel as their reference. If we forget that these traditions are
given to us to help us lay hold of Christ, then they appear to be superfluous
and the disciplines they encourage us to do seem to serve no real purpose. We
start to evaluate the discipline by the values of the dominant culture — by a
cost-benefit calculus, rather than seeing them as ways to morally reorient
ourselves towards Christ.
Instead of preparing for the birth of
Christ through inward reorientation, we follow the direction of the dominant
culture and skip any preparation altogether. We party instead of fast. We get
caught up in the commercial energy of the season rather than wait on the Spirit
of God.
It’s a dangerous path. Our culture is
becoming increasingly secularized; the sacred dimension of creation is slipping
from view. This loss of this sacred sensibility has grave ramifications for
society that are expressed in many different ways such as the vulgarization of
popular culture or the reduction of an unborn child to a commodity. If this
view prevails our culture will inevitably view man as nothing more than an
animal or a machine.
But man is more than an animal or a
machine. The scriptures reveal man is created in the image and likeness of God,
a phrase that means that man is not complete unless he partakes of God — God
must be part of man’s life. This longing — this innate knowledge that man is
created for God — never leaves man although a person can bury it if he so
chooses.
A secularized mind is blind to the
inherent holiness of life. Maintaining our traditions is one way to avoid this
debilitating malady. Christmas is not just “Jesus’ birthday” (an impoverished
notion heard more and more even among Orthodox faithful), but much more.
The birth of Christ and His baptism ought
never to be divorced. Both events define the Christmas season. It imparts to
the Christian the knowledge that Christ’s coming into the world and Christ’s
sanctification of the waters makes our new life possible — a sonship by
adoption accomplished through baptism.
When the link between Christmas and
Theophany is broken (and by neglecting the proper preparation we break it), the
cultural memory of the promise of new birth expresses itself in weakened and
ultimately insufficient cultural forms. These forms function as a new
tradition.
Religion is not the product of culture;
religion is the source, writes philosopher Russell Kirk. “It’s from an
association in a cult, abody of worshipers, that human community grows…when
belief in the cult has been wretchedly enfeebled, the culture will decay
swiftly. The material order restson the spiritual order.”*
Orthodox Christianity can contribute to
the recovery of the moral foundation of American culture by imparting knowledge
that can strengthen and deepen that foundation. It won’t happen however, if the
Orthodox faithful adopt the practices of the dominant culture in place of their
own tradition.
by Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse –
*Russell
Kirk “Civilization with Religion” The Heritage Foundation Report (July 24,
1992).
Source: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2013/12/the-twelve-days-of-christmas-in-the-orthodox-tradition/
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