Nativity

“ Before we pass on to the pagan aspects of Christmas, let us gather up our thoughts in an attempt to realize the peculiar appeal of the Feast of the Nativity, as it has been felt in the past, as it is felt to-day even by moderns who have no belief in the historical truth of the story it commemorates. ”

“ But first we must consider the side of the festival suggested by the English and French names: Christmas will stand for the liturgical rites commemorating the wonder of the Incarnation—God in man made manifest—Noël or “the Birthday,” for the ways in which men have striven to realize the human aspect of the great Coming.
How can we reach the inner meaning of the Nativity feast, its significance for the faithful? ”

“ Christmas, Easter with the three following days and Pentecost with two, Corpus Christi, Circumcision, and Epiphany. Our Lady’s feasts were: the Nativity, Annunciation, Purification, and Assumption; a few years later her Conception was added. Then came the festivals of the twelve apostles, St Michael (8th May) , the Invention of the Cross, the Nativity of St John the Baptist, St Lawrence, St Martin, St Mary Magdalen, St Catherine, All Saints’, the Holy Innocents, the Dedication of the Church and the feast of the Patron Saint. ”

“ Apart from the transformation of the Church's Christmas from something austere and metaphysical into something joyous and human, warm and kindly, we shall note in our Second Part the survival of much that is purely pagan, continuing alongside of the celebration of the Nativity, and often little touched by its influence. ”

“ We are now four days from the feast of the Nativity, and many things commonly regarded as distinctive of Christmas have already come under notice. We have met, for instance, with several kinds of present-giving, with auguries for the New Year, with processions of carol-singers and well-wishers, with ceremonial feasting that anticipates the Christmas eating and drinking, and with various figures, saintly or monstrous, mimed or merely imagined, which we shall find reappearing at the greatest of winter festivals. ”

“ Heaven and earth have met together; the rough stable is become the palace of the Great King.
This we might well call the “Catholic” Christmas, the Christmas of the age when the Church most nearly answered to the needs of the whole man, spiritual and sensuous. The Reformation in England and Germany did not totally destroy it; in England the carol-singers kept up for a while the old spirit; in Lutheran Germany a highly coloured and surprisingly sensuous celebration of the Nativity lingered on into the eighteenth century. ”

“ IV. The properties of the twofold nativity and nature of Christ are weighed one against another.
There enters then these lower parts of the world the Son of God, descending from His heavenly home and yet not quitting His Father’s glory, begotten in a new order by a new nativity. ”

“ Every exalted anticipation of final release from sin and sorrow, of attainment to the unspeakable joys of purity and wisdom, obedience and peace, is utterly groundless, save as it is connected with the Nativity hymned this day by the Christain Church Catholic. ”

“ For the Church had formerly appointed two periods of forty days, besides the great one of Lent:—the one preceding the nativity, usually called S. Martin's, and lasting from his day to the nativity; [Footnote 552] the other, forty days before the Feast of S. John Baptist:—in which men should give especial heed unto prayers, alms, and fastings. But in regard of the frailty of man, these two seasons have been reduced to one, and that one again divided into the three weeks of advent, and three before the nativity of S. John: at which times men ought to fast and abstain from marriage. ”

“ As at Rome, so too in Latin North Africa, the Nativity of the Baptist must have been celebrated with special honour, for we possess no fewer than seven sermons of St Augustine on it, and he distinctly speaks of it as a festival which had come down from his predecessors. ”

“ Calamy in his sermon said, "This day is the day which is commonly called the Feast of Christ's Nativity, or Christmas Day, a day that hath hitherto been much abused in superstition and profaneness. I have known some that have preferred Christmas Day before the Lord's Day, and have cried down the Lord's Day and cried up Christmas Day. ”

“ Strange, indeed, that men, endowed with many Christian virtues, should have ever thought it a duty to oppose so bitterly the celebration of a festival in honor of the Nativity of Christ! Happily, Time, the great ally of Truth, has worked a change in this respect ”

“ On a general view of the vernacular Christmas poetry of France it must be admitted that the devotional note is not very strong; there is indeed a formal reverence, a courtly homage, paid to the Infant Saviour, and the miraculous in the Gospel story is taken for granted; but there is little sense of awe and mystery. In harmony with the realistic instincts of the nation, everything is dramatically, very humanly conceived; at times, indeed, the personages of the Nativity scenes quite lose their sacred character, and the treatment degenerates into grossness. ”

“ So the narrative of the Nativity in our Gospel sublimates the beliefs of the Orientals about God's purpose in those lights of the firmament, by making the guide of the Wise Men to the birthplace of the Prince of Peace a great star, whose pure and serene light symbolized the peace and holiness which, in the "fullness of time," his kingdom shall bring upon the earth. ”

“ The practice of hailing the Nativity with music, in commemoration of the song of the angels, is in full observance in Roman Catholic countries as well as in our own. There are, we fancy, few of our readers who have not had opportunities of listening to the divine strains which mingle in the Roman services that usher in the blessed morning itself. The noëls of France are of the same character as the Christmas carols of England ”

“ A holy season which, though it is observed by some branches of the Church as a strict fast, is not comprised among the fasts of the Church of England, is that of Advent; the season of preparation for celebrating the festival of the Nativity. ”

“ It is the Incarnation that justifies all joy, and song is the expression of joy. The Gospel Songs all celebrate the Great Nativity. Birth [Pg viii] and marriage are the occasions most sacred to mirth and music among men; and Christmas is at once the Birthday and the Marriage Festival of Humanity. ”

“ The priest then goes up to the altar; bows down in the posture of humiliation; kisses it with respect; makes mention of the saint whose relics are there; incenses it; and having saluted the people, immediately turns to the book, and reads the prayer of the day. On great festivals there is only one prayer, which has always reference to the solemnity then celebrating. Thus, at Easter, allusion is made to the resurrection of our Saviour; at Christmas, to his nativity; in masses for the dead, mention is made of the souls prayed for ”

“ Having won his congregation to solemnity of feeling, the preacher taught them that "All good Christians celebrate the day of Christ's nativity, a day of joy both in heaven and on earth: in heaven for a day of glory unto God on high; on earth for a day of peace here below, and good-will towards men ”

“ The image of the Virgin Mary was placed in a stable prepared behind the altar. A boy from above, before the choir, in the likeness of an angel, announced the nativity to certain canons or vicars, who entered as shepherds through the great door of the choir, clothed in tunicks and amesses. Many boys in the vaults of the church, like angels, then began the 'gloria in excelsis.' The shepherds, hearing this, advanced to the stable, singing 'peace, goodwill,' &c. ”

“ Thus will they be judged by Christ, the quick and the dead. We have spoken of Christ’s first nativity, which is without time; spoken of the other in the fullness of time, Christ’s nativity of the Virgin ”

“ And this side of Christmas is penetrated often by the mystical spirit—that sense of the Infinite in the finite without which the highest human life is impossible.
157The feeling for Christmas varies from mere delight in the Christ Child as a representative symbol on which to lavish affection, as a child delights in a doll, to the mystical philosophy of Eckhart, in whose Christmas sermons the Nativity is viewed as a type of the Birth of God in the depths of man's being. ”

“ Plenary.—Visit to the Chapel or Church of the Confraternity; Confession, Communion, prayers for the Pope's intentions between first Vespers and sunset of the following feasts (i e., from about 1 o'clock P. M. of the vigils of these feasts until sunset of the feasts themselves) , Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, Ascension, Whitsunday, or any two Fridays in Lent, All Saints, and any day within eight days after All Souls, on Sunday within Octave of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, on the third Sunday of April. ”

“ Hope smiled when your nativity was cast, ”

“ Otto Schmid says (Kirchenlex., I, 370) that in medieval times it was customary in the great Swiss monastery of St. Gall to read this admirable work on the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady as a commentary on the Gospel of the day, i.e. ”

“ It is the wonder of the Incarnation, the marvel of the spotless Birth, the song of the Angels, the coming down from heaven of true peace, the daybreak of redemption and everlasting joy, the glory of the Only-begotten, now beheld by men—the supernatural side, in fact, of the festival, that the Church sets forth in her radiant words; there is little thought of the purely human side, the pathos of Bethlehem.
It was customary at certain places, in mediaeval times, to lay on the altar three veils, and remove one at each nocturn of Christmas Matins. ”

“ Let us therefore on this Holy Natal Day, from which the whole world dates its time, begin on our knees before that altar which is at once manger, cross, throne. Let us join thereafter in holy cheer of praise and prayer and exhortation and Christmas carol, and then let us go forth with a Christmas spirit in our hearts resolved to communicate it to the children of men, and not merely for the day but for the future. To make the right use of these our privileges, this it is to save the world. ”

“ At the feast of Christmas, the Roman catholics have exhibited in their churches a cradle, with an image of an infant in it, which is rocked with great seeming devotion; and on Good-Friday they have the figure of our Saviour on the cross, and then they perform the service which they call the Tenebres; having abundance of lighted candles, all of which they extinguish one by one, after which the body is taken down from the cross and put into a sepulchre, and men stand to watch it. ”

“ Each homestead, and old Christmas brow
Is crowned with evergreen tonight.
A snowy mantle's on the grass—
Old frozen Winter placed it there.
And trooping to the midnight mass,
Our hearts are filled with holy prayer
⁠To welcome blessed Christmas.
The church is all ablaze with light,
And pious hands have placed there
Festoons of brilliant green and white:
The crib arranged with holy Care,
From God's high altar there ascends
A light, like glory's brightest beam;
The organ's peal, that melting blends
Our souls into blissful dream,
⁠To welcome holy Christmas. ”

“ Novena for Christmas.
1.O GOD and Saviour of our souls, sweet Infant Jesus, Whom the angels and shepherds adored in the stable of Bethlehem on that holy night when Thou wert born of the Virgin Mary, we offer Thee our profound adoration and our most earnest thanksgiving for having become man for our redemption and salvation; grant that we may apply all our powers to fulfil Thy gracious designs, that we may become perfectly renewed in heart and inflamed with Thy holy love. ”

“ Most readers of this book must have seen one of these structures representing the stable at Bethlehem, with the Child in the manger, His mother and St. Joseph, the ox and the ass, and perhaps the shepherds, the three kings, or worshipping angels. They are the delight of children, who through the season of Christmas and Epiphany wander into the open churches at all times of day to gaze wide-eyed on the life-like scene and offer a prayer to their Little Brother. No one with anything of the child-spirit can fail to be touched by the charm of the Christmas crib. ”

“ When the world lay hushed and still
Christmas morn,
Suddenly were skies athrill—
"Christ is born!"
Angel voices, high and clear,
Chanted tidings of good cheer,
"See, the Infant King is here,
Christ is born!" ”

“ Come, hold yourselves in readiness. I can see them lighting the tapers; they have constructed a little manger before the Virgin's altar; the banner is unfurled; the beadle is bustling about. He has a bad cold, the poor man; how he sneezes! Monsieur le Curé has put on his embroidered alb. I hear the approaching sound of wooden shoes; the peasants are coming to pray. The clock is about to strike the hour—now—Christmas! Christmas! Ring out with all your heart and all your might! Let no man say that he has not been summoned to midnight Mass. ”

“ The Pagans had a festival at this season of the year called The Birthday of the Sun of which they were very fond. Out of this grew the idea of using that time to celebrate the birth of Christ, the spiritual Sun of the world. This gradually took the place of the old pagan festival.”
“The singing of Christmas songs is an English custom, is it not?” asked Billy.
“Yes,” said Somebody. “There are many beautiful old-world customs which were left behind when the Puritans came to the new world in search of a place in which to worship in their own way. ”