Cottage Blessings

Making Room in the Inn

It is easy to write a column resolving to change our Christmas ways, but a bit more difficult mapping out what such a Christmas would look like.  We still have very small children at home—children who are dreaming about Santa Claus and that room full of toys on Christmas morning. I can see them in my mind’s eye tumbling down the stairs on Christmas morning, half sleepy, half exhilarated, and quivering with excitement.  When those new footie pajamas slide into the living room, what will they find there?  To tell the truth, at this point, I am not exactly sure.

This is the time of year I usually start Christmas planning with lists—gifts and toys, errands and jobs, food and clothing.  Endless purchases and tasks that seem to grow by the day until December 25th. Today, I am setting those thoughts and cares aside.  A Baby is coming, and we all want to meet Him. Our preparations must be about making room for Him and showing Him he is welcomed and loved. My only question this year will be, “How do we prepare for the Baby?”

In the Traditional Latin Mass, after the “Ite, missa est” (“Go, the Mass is ended”) and final blessing, the Last Gospel is read. The first few times we attended a traditional Mass, it was almost jarring to stand for a Gospel reading just when we expected the priest to process out. Every Sunday, it kept taking me by surprise. It is always the same opening passage from the Book of John, a mirror of the story of Creation, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Then comes a line that always cuts me to the heart:

“He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.”

I wonder how many Christmases we have not really quite received Him.  Like that busy, overworked innkeeper, we did not abandon Him all together, but we set him aside in the stable, when He should have been the center of everything.  St. Luke tells the story so familiar: “And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” That inn was the original crowded shopping mall, so full of important people, distracted people, disgruntled people, that the Son of Man had no place to rest His head.

In “Life of Christ,” Venerable Fulton Sheen writes, “When finally the scrolls of history are completed down to the last words in time, the saddest line of all will be ‘There was no room in the inn.’”

This year, Christmas of 2015, with God’s help, may it be different.  May our homes be ablaze with light and love worthy to welcome “the true Light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world.”

Planning Ahead

This is my September 2015 column for The Long Island Catholic. I am posting it here, because it does not appear to be linked at the paper's website. If the malls and stores wish to banish Our Lord, it is up to us to do more than merely boycott. We need to change our traditions and walk away from the rush and madness for good. Here is the column:

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No one loved Christmas gift giving more than my mother. All year long, she would collect toys here and there, so that when Christmas day dawned, our living room was piled high with presents. I was an only child, so whatever was waiting under the tree was mine. When we celebrated my eldest daughter’s first Christmas, my husband was mildly amused to see the hoard that awaited her. “Does she really need all this stuff?” he asked, surveying the rocking horse, blocks, games, dolls and stuffed animals. As our nine-month-old daughter sucked her thumb and played with the tag on a Teddy bear, I answered with perfect confidence, “Absolutely!”

It makes me smile to remember it now. If I had known we would have nine children, I might have paced myself just a bit. Although materialism has long been a problem in American Christmas tradition, there really was a sweetness to it all those years ago. The old standard song, Silver Bells, describes the season as I remember: “In the air, there’s a feeling of Christmas. Children laughing, people passing, meeting smile after smile.”

Last December, I dropped my teens off at a party and decided to do some Christmas shopping at a local mall. There was something oppressive about the atmosphere. Everyone seemed angry or just bewildered. The shops were trashed. A well known lingerie store hawked its wares just opposite a children’s clothing store. The weary mothers did not bother to shield their children’s eyes from the billboard-sized, soft-porn images. I thought of my days in college, selling cosmetics at a large department store. We would greet each customer with a smile and a “Merry Christmas.” Today, in this mall, not a soul dared to wish another a Merry Christmas, and the whole place seemed smothered in a shroud of misery.

American retailers depend on Christmas shopping for 40% of their yearly income. According to Gallup, the average American adult planned to spend $781 on Christmas gifts this past year, and the numbers are on the rise. How can we continue to celebrate the birth of our Savior by piling up credit card bills and filling our homes with junk purchased from retailers who have purged the name of Christ from their stores?

It may only be September, but this is the year I am going to stop burning incense before the god of materialism. We are planning other ways to celebrate, especially with our littlest children. When I look back upon the happiest Christmases of my life, I remember the red candle my mother burned on Christmas Eve, the choir singing hymns at St. Mary’s Church before Midnight Mass, my father reading the story of the birth of Jesus from a picture book and, many years later, my husband reading “A Christmas Carol” to our children every year.

If Christians are to be shuffled out of the public square in 2015 America, let us go together joyfully, shake the dust of the world from our feet, and gather around the manger. There we will find the only Gift that will ever truly matter.