Light On Dark Water

On the Last Day of Christmas

The actual last day of Christmas was, of course, a couple of
days ago in the Western calendar, on December 6 (or December
5th—there seem to be different approaches to the
counting). But the Feast of the Epiphany has been moved to the
nearest Sunday, or however the rule is written. I don’t
like the change—it seems too much a capitulation to the
secular—but this year it does at least provide a harmony
between the official calendar and the day when we take our tree
down.

It’s at such points in the Church year that I regret the
absence of a Catholic culture. After years of struggle against
the secular-Protestant Christmas which mainly occurs during
Advent, my wife and I are no longer fighting it all that hard.
Our children are mostly grown, so we no longer have the
motivating force of wanting to teach them the way it should be
done. But one way in which we keep the flame alive is by waiting
until a few days before Christmas to put up our tree, and until
Epiphany (or thereabouts, depending on what else is going on) to
take it down. Few Christmas seasons pass without some
acquaintance twitting me about what appears to them as laziness
or procrastination. I don’t mind this from non-Catholics,
but to hear it from Catholics, which is not unusual, is pretty
annoying.

So here we are again, two weeks after Christmas, our house one
of the last in the neighborhood still showing Christmas lights.
In the eyes of others these probably combine with our nondescript
house and our yard in need of a good deal of work to give an
impression of sloth. Well, so be it.

A few Christmases ago I mentioned to one of my then-teenaged
daughters that I get more pleasure out of giving presents to my
children than getting them myself. At first she didn’t
believe me. In fact I’m not sure she ever did. I managed to
stop myself from giving her the patronizing response that she
wouldn’t understand until she had children of her own, but
she probably won’t. The love of a normal parent for his or
her children is for most of us the closest we will ever come to a
truly unselfish love, in this life at any rate. And in it we get
a hint of the love God bears to us. And we also get a hint of why
God doesn’t always answer our prayers. We don’t give
our children everything they want, and would be guilty of neglect
if we did.

I always hate to take the tree down. Right now the living room
seems empty and bare, and I think I would like for it to be
Christmas all year ‘round. But of course I wouldn’t.
I would soon tire of it; I would cease to notice or appreciate
it, and it would be assumed into the normal drab background of
everyday life. God knows this, and if this is a case where I can
understand his will, it’s a good thing to think about while
I get used to the passing of another Christmas.