Christmas and the ‘End of History’

Christmas, even in the neo-pagan anti-culture of the Western World, like a gargantuan, forgotten cenotaph covered in overgrowth, remains the premier annual feast to most post-Christians, for whom the ancient liturgical year has become a distant memory. It is intrinsically non-secular, even anti-secular, because unlike Fukuyama’s silly musings on the “End of History”, Christmas Day truly marked the ending of an age, and the dawn of a new one: indeed, the last age of the world, bringing to an end centuries of ignorance of the love of God for all humanity.

Given that most self-professed Christians practice very little of what would be considered orthodox Christianity, and comparatively few have any lived experience of the cycle of the Church’s year, it is something of a marvel that Christmas remains celebrated at all, even by those who profess no religion. There is something about Christmas, and how it marks the end of the secular year, that continues to speak to the hearts of modern men and women: Christmas is the high feast of enchantment. While most secularists try to absorb the transcendence and wonder of Christmas into flashing lights, discount shopping and Santa Claus, these things buckle under the weight. Christmas still stands as a permanent memorial in the background to a new order, the small stone which became a mountain which fills the whole earth (Daniel 2:35). Even if the story is forgotten by an increasing number of Christendom’s estranged great-grandchildren, these children still dream Christian dreams.

The importance of time in the annual celebration of Christmas is something we should ponder. For instance, it is a feast established on the “Sanctoral Cycle”, established by the date on the now Gregorian Solar Calendar, instead of the Lunar Calendar, which determines the date of the celebration of Easter. Thus Advent, the preparatory penitential season before Christmas, begins at a fairly regular period of time before Christmas. It is thus also the only season of the year that counts the days both leading up to Christmas and after, and that by solar calendar date: hence, especially in the seven days before Christmas Eve, the prayers of the Roman Breviary and Missal are no longer a certain ferial day of a certain week of Advent: they are known simply as December 17, 18, 19, and so on. And so after the Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord (the formal name for Christmas), the days are marked in two ways simultaneously: as both the calendar day with the adjoining Feast, like St. Stephen, December 26th, St. John, December 27th, which are also the second and third day of the Octave of Christmas, respectively. Additionally, we have the famous Christian Proclamation, found in the Roman Martyrology, which dates the time of the birth of Christ in relation to a multitude of earthly events, both sacred and profane. Time, and the calendar, thus are front and center in the celebration of the Nativity of Christ.

What does this all mean? I’d like to borrow an image I once saw from the 2005 film Into Great Silence, which features, nearly entirely in silence, the daily life of the Carthusians of the Grande Chartreuse, the foremost of the Carthusian monasteries worldwide. At a few points throughout the movie, the film looks into the night sky around the monastery in the pristine Alps, as the stars appear to turn around the Monastery in time lapse. Knowingly or not, this image captures beautifully the Carthusian motto, Stat crux dum volvitur orbis, or “The Cross stands, while the world turns.” It also brings to mind the beautiful image of Dante, who describes the vision of the Holy Trinity as that “love that moves the sun and the other stars.” That is to say, the center of ‘metaphysical gravity’ of the world, indeed of the whole universe, is God himself. So too, God, and his action in the world, are what marks the true events of significance in history. Is this perhaps part of the mystery of the great ‘Star of Bethlehem’, that moved and settled over the Christ child? To mark the centrality of this moment of perfect beauty, in which heaven and earth intersect?

The Masses of Christmas help us understand this even more. It is the only Feast of the Roman Rite which has four separate Masses, with accompanying chant and proper prayers. Most people, because of their impatience and superficiality (alas, many Priests fall into the same trap!) only ever hear the Mass In Nocte, the Mass at night, which traditionally is celebrated at midnight. It is at that Mass alone that it is proper to read the traditional Lucan account of the Birth of Christ (Luke 2:1-20). But there are other Masses, with different emphases: the Mass in Vigilia (Christmas Eve night, proper) emphasizes the Genealogy of Christ and is our last nod to the shadowy prophecies of old. The Mass in Nocte, usually celebrated at or around Midnight, emphasizes the historical fulfillment of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem of Judea under the reign of Augustus Caesar. As previously mentioned, the Christmas Proclamation, chanted at that Mass, also helps situate the Nativity of Christ at a certain point in historical time. The Mass In Aurora, or at Dawn, focuses on the human reaction to the birth of Christ in the person of the shepherds. Finally, the Mass In Die, or during the daytime of Christmas, mysteriously focuses on the Incarnation through the sublime words of the Prologue of the Gospel of John. This same prologue, then, with which the readings of Christmas Day end, becomes as it were an anthem, accompanying the Church throughout the Christmas Season.

We see then, in the various Christmas Masses, a “descent” into time via the Vigil and an “ascent” into transcendent eternity at the Daytime Mass: the middle two Masses form the core, describing the actual historical event of the birth of Christ. In a way, those two Masses describe the event of the Incarnation in ‘chronic’ way, whereas the two “end” Masses describe the Incarnation in a ‘kairotic’ way, as the plan of God from all eternity as proceeding from his Eternal Wisdom. Our Lord was truly born in the “fullness of time”, as St. Paul proclaimed (Galatians 4:4), a providentially appointed hour in which the Word of God, existing from all eternity, “has begun to exist in time”, as the Preface of the Nativity proclaims.

The chants reinforce this idea of the importance of time. The Introit for the Vigil Mass, Hodie Scietis, proclaim that “you will know today that the Lord shall come, and he shall save us.” The Gradual proclaims the same. The Alleluia verse, Crastina die, emphasizes that “tomorrow the iniquity of the world will be destroyed.” Time, as it has been emphasized from December 17-23 explicitly, is being counted with great expectation. The grammatical future tense still predominates, and hope is in the air.

Then comes the Mass that first marks the birth of Christ proper, In Nocte. The Church stands in stupefaction at the mystery of the babe of Bethlehem. First the chant of the Introit “Dominus Dixit”, that glorious Second Psalm which is also enshrined in the Church’s Sunday Vespers: “The Lord has said unto me, you are my Son. This day I have begotten you.” The Church thus does something absolutely marvelous, weaving in the eternal generation of the Word of God with a prophecy for his being literally begotten in time by the miraculous childbearing of the Virgin Mary. All the while the Church, while transcending time, continues with its continued emphasis on this day.  This is a helpful reminder to us that the Liturgy, which is a participation in the celebration of the Mystery of Christ in every facet, transports the past to us, and us to the past: every time, whether it is 2018 or 2118, is that first Christmas Day in the first century, whenever the Church gathers to celebrate to the Incarnation of the Lord.

The celebration of the Nativity with its Masses also takes advantage of the time bound features of the natural order: the darkness of a Vigil, the contrast of the “light of the world” born at Midnight, when natural darkness is at its peak, both in the time of day, as in the year. Following this, we contemplate Christ as the “dawn on high” that has broken upon us, again using the rising of the sun as a natural point of reference to help instruct our hearts, minds and sensibilities. Such deep resonances between the spiritual and natural order help form the imagination, and reinforce the enchantment of Christmas. As G.K. Chesterton remarked, Christianity is a fairy tale. But it is one which has the advantage of being true.

The birth of Christ, from which we date the current age, began a new time, and ended an old one. So too, the birth of Christ means he came to bring an end to the ‘old man’, and give birth to the ‘new.’ How worthy was the noble Virgin, to have held such a precious charge in her sinless body, and to caress him with her loving arms! And when that little babe looked up into those immaculate eyes, Our Lord looked at his first fully redeemed creature: Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem! Begin, O little boy, to know your mother by her smile! So too may he recognize us, his children, by our imitation of him and his Mother, to that we too, children of time, may be made by this mystery sons of eternity.