Christmas Traditions

As of tomorrow, we will officially be five days away from Christmas.  This might set off alarm bells in your head or it might trigger great feelings of excitement.  The former is probably more to do with the secular expectations that accompany the celebration of Christmas.  The latter would stem from a child-like delight in Christmas and/or from a deeper understanding of why we are celebrating – Jesus is born for us!

We are lucky here at St. Ambrose to be exposed to multiple cultures.  The students at Cosgriff will take part in a school-wide Posada tomorrow (the Hispanic tradition of traveling from house to house – or in this case, room to room – seeking shelter, as a re-enactment of Mary and Joseph entering Bethlehem and finding no place to stay other than the stable).  On Saturday, St. Ambrose will host the Filipino community for Simbang Gabi, a novena of Masses leading up to Christmas.  We host the Polish-speaking community for Mass twice a month.  Each community celebrates Christmas a little differently.

My family is a blend of European cultures.  My mother is Hungarian and my father is of English descent.  As such, we have a blended Christmas tradition.  We celebrate “European Christmas” on the 24^th.  We celebrate “American Christmas” on the 25^th.  This gives us the opportunity to experience the best of both worlds, as it were.

Our Christmas tree rarely goes up before the Fourth Week of Advent, not because we are too lazy or too busy to put it up before then, but because in Hungarian tradition, the tree wouldn’t go up until the 24^th.  Jesus and the angels (in the guise of the “grown-ups” in the family) bring the tree and the gifts.

We abstain from meat on Christmas Eve, following Catholic tradition, but we usually have a family dinner.  At the end of dinner, we read the Christmas story from the Bible, taken from the readings for Mass at Midnight and Mass at Dawn, and then the angels (in the guise of one of the “kids” in the family) ring bells to let us know that the tree and gifts are ready for us.  We sing some Christmas carols together, and then we open gifts.  On Christmas Day, we celebrate the more “American” way, with Christmas stockings and a larger family gathering.

Of course, we also attend Mass either or both days.  In recent years, due to involvement in the choir, we have mostly attended Mass or Masses on Christmas Eve and skipped going to church on Christmas Day.

I like my family’s traditions, partly because I grew up with them, so they are familiar to me, but also because they keep Jesus Christ in Christmas.  I may come from a blended family (both in terms of cultures and religious backgrounds), but Christmas for me has been always truly “Christ”mas.