The Twelve Days of Christmas
Rev. Johannes L. Jacobse
Orthodox Christians need to remain faithful to their traditions.
In the Christian tradition of both east and west, the twelve days of Christmas refer to
the period from Christmas Day to Theophany. The days leading up to Christmas were for
preparation; a practice affirmed in the Orthodox tradition by the Christmas fast that
runs from November 15 to Christmas day. The celebration of Christmas did not begin until
the first of the twelve days.
As our culture became more commercialized, the period of celebration shifted from
Thanksgiving to Christmas Day. Christmas celebration increasingly conforms to the
shopping cycle while the older tradition falls by the wayside. It's an worrisome shift
because as the tradition dims, the knowledge that the period of preparation imparted
diminishes with it.
Our Orthodox traditions -- from fasting cycles to worship --exist to teach us how to live
in Christ. The traditions impart discipline. These disciplines are never an end in
themselves but neither can life in Christ be sustained apart from them.
The traditions only make sense only when they have the Gospel as their reference. If we
forget that these traditions are given to us to help us lay hold of Christ, then they
appear to be superfluous and the disciplines they encourage us to do seem to serve no
real purpose. We start to evaluate the discipline by the values of the dominant culture --
by a cost-benefit calculus, rather than seeing them as ways to morally reorient
ourselves towards Christ.
Instead of preparing for the birth of Christ through inward reorientation, we follow the
direction of the dominant culture and skip any preparation altogether. We party instead
of fast. We get caught up in the commercial energy of the season rather than wait on the
Spirit of God.
It's a dangerous path. Our culture is becoming increasingly secularized; the sacred
dimension of creation is slipping from view. This loss of this sacred sensibility has
grave ramifications for society that are expressed in many different ways such as the
vulgarization of popular culture or the reduction of an unborn child to a commodity. If
this view prevails our culture will inevitably view man as nothing more than an animal or
a machine.
But man is more than an animal or a machine. The scriptures reveal man is created in the
image and likeness of God, a phrase that means that man is not complete unless he
partakes of God -- God must be part of man's life. This longing -- this innate knowledge
that man is created for God -- never leaves man although a person can bury it if he so
chooses.
A secularized mind is blind to the inherent holiness of life. Maintaining our traditions
is one way to avoid this debilitating malady. Christmas is not just "Jesus' birthday" (an
impoverished notion heard more and more even among Orthodox faithful), but much more.
The birth of Christ and His baptism ought never to be divorced. Both events define the
Christmas season. It imparts to the Christian the knowledge that Christ's coming into the
world and Christ's sanctification of the waters makes our new life possible -- a sonship
by adoption accomplished through baptism.
When the link between Christmas and Theophany is broken (and by neglecting the proper
preparation we break it), the cultural memory of the promise of new birth expresses
itself in weakened and ultimately insufficient cultural forms. These forms function as a
new tradition.
Religion is not the product of culture; religion is the source, writes philosopher
Russell Kirk. "It's from an association in a cult, abody of worshipers, that human
community grows...when belief in the cult has been wretchedly enfeebled, the culture will
decay swiftly. The material order restson the spiritual order."*
Orthodox Christianity can contribute to the recovery of the moral foundation of American
culture by imparting knowledge that can strengthen and deepen that foundation. It won't
happen however, if the Orthodox faithful adopt the practices of the dominant culture in
place of their own tradition.
*Russell Kirk "Civilization with Religion" The Heritage Foundation Report (July 24, 1992).
Copyright © 2005 Johannes L. Jacobse. Rev. Jacobse is a priest in the Greek Orthodox
Archdiocese of America.
This article was published in "The Hellenic Voice," January 7, 2003.
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