Christmas Postmortem

By Santiago Rodriguez, S.J.

Credit: http://rack.2.mshcdn.com/

These reflections are the fruit of a Yuletide conversation, over coffee and sweets, with Erica Rodrigues.

Santa Claus has returned to the North Pole. The gifts have been unwrapped, gingerbread houses have been dismantled, and all the sweets have been eaten. The deed is done. The once proud and jolly Christmas tree has been recycled. Stockings, Christmas wreaths, and ornaments have been put away. Home Alone and A Charlie Brown Christmas no longer play on every TV channel. Christmas, my friends, is no more. And unless you are like me, you won’t be listening to Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You until late November.

The Gift

By John D. O'Brien, S.J.

Photo: Brian Nelson

This following story is written by a guest writer, who shall remain anonymous. 

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The children are lying on the living room rug, their stomachs distended with turkey and Christmas cake. Our guest, Father Brian, turns a beaming smile on them, lights his pipe, and seats himself with a sigh on the old rocking chair beside the wood-stove. He is content just to soak up the family atmosphere and listen to our children’s after-dinner banter.

“Tell us a story, Father,” they cry before long. The priest has a reputation for stories. More than that, he has all the time in the world for children.

“What kind of a story?” he asks.

“A Christmas story!”

“Well,” he says, pondering, his eyes growing thoughtful, “I think I do know a true story about a gift that was given on a Christmas day many years ago. But no, it’s too strange.”

Now they’re hooked. “Yes, yes, that one! That one!”

“It’s full of grown ups, “ he murmurs, “Nazis and war and things like that.”

“Yes, yes,” they squirm with anticipation.

His eyes go far away and his brow furrows. He rocks back and forth slowly, slowly, and the room grows quieter.

“I’m quite serious, when I tell you,” he says, “that this is a true story. I saw parts of it with my own eyes. I lived with the family to whom it happened.”

Then he begins:

Christmas: Time and Time Again

By Edmund Lo, S.J.

A few years ago, a fellow Jesuit introduced to me a beautiful Christmas story. It was written by Jérôme and Jean Tharaud, called La Dernière Visiteuse (The Last Visitor), and published in their work The Tales of the Virgin in 1940. Both the French original and the English translation can be found elsewhere on the interweb, but I take the liberty to include the short story here: 



It was Bethlehem, the end of a long night. The star had just disappeared, and the last pilgrim had left the stable. The Virgin arranged the straw: at last the Child could sleep. But who can sleep the night of Christmas?

Christ of the Altar and of the Street Corner

By Artur Suski, S.J. 

Credit: http://tomperna.org

Every year, we celebrate the incarnation and birth of our Lord that is Christmas. We also go a step further: we believe in Christ’s words that he will return in the glory of his Father at the end of time. Therefore, we find ourselves somewhere in between these two great events: a historical moment of the past in one, and an unfulfilled one of the future in another. But ought we really stop at these two?

The Baby is Coming

By Santiago Rodriguez, S.J.

http://www.mariansolidarity.com

In the opening song of one of my favourite musicals, Wicked, there is an exchange between the midwife and a father about the forthcoming birth of the long-expected baby.

Midwife: It's coming.

Father: Now?

Midwife: The baby is coming.

Father: And how!

They soon discover that the baby is not what they expected – they are puzzled by it;

Midwife: How can it be?

Father: What does it mean?

My friends, the baby is coming. We are now but a couple of days away from the celebration of the spiritual birth of Jesus. "To us a child is born, to us a son is given" (Is 9:6). These prophetic words are fulfilled in the infancy narrative of St. Luke the evangelist. The baby born in the stable is the eternal Son of God. Jesus is the Word who was in the beginning, the Word who was with God, the Word who was God. All things made were made through him (Jn 1:1-3). When the Prophet Isaiah says: "to us a child is born", he reveals, in all its fullness, the mystery of Christmas: the eternal generation of the Word of the Father, his birth in time through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Let There Be Light — or Not?

By Edmund Lo, S.J.

As we further venture into the heart of the Advent season, the question of “what do you do during Advent / pre-Christmas times” has surfaced on several occasions for me. A friend of mine has the wonderful tradition of baking goods in her family, of which I am one of the beneficiaries. At our Jesuit community in Regina, we light candles according to the weeks of Advent while singing O Come, O Come Emmanuel before supper. What about me? Do I have any Advent traditions that I have inherited from my past?

I was born and raised in Hong Kong, a place with quite a short documented history compared to many other places on Earth. The history of Christianity on this land. This is to say that Christianity – and subsequently Christmas – has never been culturally engrained into the genes of us Hong Kong folks. I think that this would serve as a useful context as I share with you my only recollection of any kind of an Advent/ pre-Christmas tradition that my family had. This tradition was to go into the eastern end of the ever-bubbling commercial district called Tsim Sha Tsui to look at the Christmas lights. In fact, this is quite a popular thing to do for folks in Hong Kong during this time.