The Church to which we belong has always lived in a surrounding culture, with which it has no choice but to interact. The Church is essentially the same down through the centuries and in all parts of the world, but often its practices and observances take on different hues and feelings because the culture of the people is different. This applies to Advent and Christmas.

Christmas feels different in Vietnam, Argentina, Canada, Slovakia, Italy, and so on. The Church in different areas constantly borrows from the ambient culture, taking from it values, festivals, patterns of behaviour, transforming them to make its own liturgies and religious observances more attractive and accessible to the people. But the Church is also counter-cultural: it can take strong stands against certain aspects of the surrounding culture, such as the general atmosphere of permissiveness today regarding right to life.

The process of borrowing works in the other direction as well. The culture sometimes takes religious festivals and observances of the Church and uses them for its own ends. So parallel to our preparation for the religious feast of Christmas we are more and more caught up in the advertising-driven hullabaloo of preparing for another festival, whose point is not to acclaim the saviour of the world but to get people to open up their purses and worship the golden calf of commercialism.  The festival of Christmas fills us with a sense of wonder and hope. The coinciding commercial festival, without the safeguard of genuine religious observance, will in the long run leave us with a sense of emptiness.

An example of the first kind of borrowing, the Church borrowing from the culture, relates to the liturgical cycle we are about to begin, that of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany.

The Gospels do not tell us when Jesus was born. They give us an idea of the year, which may be either 4 or 6 BC. But they tell us nothing that will help us determine the date. The birth of Jesus is a momentous event in the history of the world that Christians want to remember and celebrate yearly. But on what date? The early Church grew in the Roman Empire, and there were many religious traditions floating around in that complex world. One of them was the celebration each year of the Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus). December 21 is the shortest day of the year. But from that day onwards, the sun begins to increase its hours of presence each day. The Sun appeared to be on the way to its demise, but it begins to increase in strength and presence.

So it made a lot of sense for the Church to choose December 25th, a high point of this pagan celebration, for its own celebration of the birth of Christ, who is the unconquered light of the world.  Christians would feel comfortable with this choice of date, and over the centuries it has worked beautifully in all areas of the world. At the same time many other pagan traditions, coming mainly from the barbarian tribes who took over the Western Roman Empire, were also transformed by Christianity, and we enjoy wreaths, candles, and Christmas trees and other such symbols. They are less universal than the date of Christmas, but nonetheless have been widely adopted.

We have mentioned the other kind of borrowing, in which the culture borrows from the Church. Christmas began as a religious feast, and it was considered so important that a period of preparation for it, known as Advent, emerged in the practice of the Church. There is also evidence of gift-giving as a practice of this pre-Christian period of celebration. Indeed gift-giving is part of the Christmas story: for instance we all know the beautiful story of the three wise men who came to Jesus with their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

 As I researched the origins of Christmas gift-giving on the web, the first site that Google gave me was a site set up to promote Hershey and Girardelli chocolate. That says it all. I have nothing against Hershey bars and chocolate from the Ghirardelli company in San Francisco. To be honest chocolate is for me an easy entry into my own version of gluttony.

But the point I wish to make is that our culture, which is highly commercialized, has commandeered our religious festival and made of it an occasion for people to spend money which often they do not have. To give simple gifts as a token of our love and our family bonds is wonderful. But it is not wonderful to be constantly battered by advertising which creates artificial needs, makes us feel guilty when we spend less, lays before us an illusory world of beautiful and wonderful things we can buy on credit. It is a travesty. The material gift becomes the focus rather than the spiritual relationship which it expresses and nurtures.

Santa Claus, based on the stories around Saint Nicholas, a third century bishop who lived in what is present-day Turkey, has become the focal point of this commercial celebration, with parades which over the decades have taken place earlier and earlier because the season of sales can be prolonged and revenues increased. Gift-giving is great, but it should not be an empty gesture to allay the guilt and envy which advertising seeks to implant in us.

I am sure that you know many traditional Christmas carols. If you study their words, you will find in them profound and poetic expressions of the mystery we celebrate. It is worth taking them as themes for our prayer. They lead us into the religious significance of the feast we prepare for during Advent and celebrate at Christmas and Epiphany. They warm our hearts and make us responsive to God’s grace. But commercial Christmas is a secular feast, and a different set of Christmas songs has developed, the jingle of which harmonizes with the jingle of cash in our pockets available for purchases.

So you can see that borrowing can take place in two different directions, from Church to culture, and from culture to Church, and we have to be discerning as Christians in properly preparing for and celebrating  Christmas. We cannot avoid entering to some extent into the practices of commercial Christmas, but let us not get sucked into them. Part of our preparation will be shopping lists, the search for sales, the wrapping of presents, strings of sparkling lights, mistletoe, mulled wine, and so on. And within proper limits, that is good. But at heart our preparation ought to be a religious one.