Daily Thought For December 23, 2020
Advent & Christmas Customs
Perhaps the easiest way to understand this is to look at the inner meaning of our Advent customs. Almost all of these are rooted in passages of Scripture that the Church employs in this time as words of her prayer. Here, the faithful people have, as it were, translated Scripture into visible signs.
For example, we read in Psalm 96: “Then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes.” The liturgy has expanded this, drawing on other texts in the Psalms, to form the following affirmation: “The mountains and hills will sing praise before God, and all the trees of the wood will clap their hands, for the Lord, the ruler, is coming to rule for ever.”
The Christmas trees we decorate are simply an attempt to make these words visible. The Lord is here—our ancestors believed this and knew this, and so the trees had to go out to meet him, they had to bow down before him, the trees themselves had to become a song of praise to their Lord. The same certainty of faith led them to make the words about the singing mountains and hills a reality. They gave a voice to the mountains, and their singing resounds down through the centuries into our own days, letting us sense something of the nearness of the Lord—for it is only he who could give men such melodies.
Even a custom like Christmas baking, apparently such an external activity, has its roots in the Church’s Advent liturgy, which makes its own the glorious words of the Old Testament in these days of the declining year: “In that day, the mountains will drip sweetness, and the rivers will flow with milk and honey.” People of old found in such words the embodiment of their hopes for a world redeemed. And once again, our ancestors celebrated Christmas as the day on which God truly came. When he comes at Christmas, he distributes his honey (so to speak). Truly, the earth must flow with this honey on that day: where he is present, all bitterness disappears, and there is harmony between heaven and earth, between God and man. The honey and the sweets are a sign of this peace, of concord and of joy.
This is why Christmas has become the feast when we give presents, when we imitate the God who has given his own self and has thereby given us once again that life which truly becomes a gift only when the “milk” of our existence is sweetened by the “honey” of being loved. And this love is not threatened by any death, any infidelity, or any meaninglessness.
Ultimately, all this finds its unity in the joy that God has become a child who encourages us to trust as children trust and to give and receive gifts.
It may be difficult for us to accept this joyful music when we are tormented by questions, when we are afflicted both by bodily illness and psychological problems, and these would tend to make us rebel against the God whom we cannot understand. But this child is a sign of hope precisely for those who are oppressed. And this is why he has awakened an echo so pure that its consoling power can touch the hearts even of unbelievers.
Perhaps the right way to celebrate Advent is to let the signs of God’s love that we receive in this period penetrate our soul, without resistance, without questions and quibbling. Warmed by these signs, we can then receive in full confidence the immeasurable kindness of this child who alone had the power to make the mountains sing and to transform the trees of the wood into a praise of God.
Benedict XVI. (2007). The Blessing of Christmas. (B. McNeil, Trans.) (pp. 29–32). San Francisco: Ignatius Press.