BECOME a resister. Reject the false and meretricious celebration of Christmas. It’s just an elaborate con. Observe Advent, not the exhausting, soulless, secular shopping fest. Light your candles every evening and walk through that sublime, evergreen forest of expectation. Recall your sins with sorrow and ask God to illuminate your heart and mind with hope and true love for the divine infant Child.

Do you ever wonder why Christmas decorations look so intensely tawdry after Christmas? It’s because they remind us of missed opportunities. They speak the truth. The dazzle was a con. Let the stars and the moon and an evergreen tree growing nearby be your Christmas decorations. If you don’t have the spirit of Christmas within, what difference does it make how many sprigs of fake holly you own or how enchanted your children are on Christmas morning? We’re all dummies when it comes to Advent, having lived in a culture that marginalizes this phase of the year.

It’s true, there are moments of euphoria in the hectic “holiday season.” But there are moments of euphoria in a dose of heroin too. That euphoria has a price: anxiety, stress, financial insolvency and distraction from the essence of Christmas.

Thomas Droleskey explains the true meaning of Advent, and how to observe the season, at Christ or Chaos:

The principal of a fully traditional Catholic school some years ago now explained some basic Catholic teachings about Advent in a letter sent home parents to explain why the school would not be participating in a tree lighting ceremony in a nearby park:

This letter is to inform you that the students will not be participating in the annual tree-lighting ceremony.

The ceremony, scheduled for December 1st, is to be secular in tone, featuring such songs as “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and “Frosty the Snowman,” so as to be politically correct by modern standards. We, as faithful Catholics, do not condone the premature celebration of the feast of Christmas itself, nor do we approve of the purely secular “holiday” celebrations which the world in general promotes as a “Christ-less” alternative to Christmas. Therefore, we cannot participate in the planned festivities on Stepney Green.

The mind of Our Holy Mother the Church must be our rule of action. The Church would have us observe Advent. Although, to be sure, Advent is not another Lent, as regards fasting and other penitential practices, nevertheless it is a reverent hush, so to speak, during which we recollect ourselves and joyfully anticipate the glorious feast of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s Nativity. When Christmas arrives, we shall celebrate it all the better for having piously observed Advent.

We must not allow ourselves to get swept up by the spirit of these worldly times. The spirit of the Catholic Church is not one of yielding to human respect and emotionalism, or of compromising with the world. “Peace on Earth; good will to men” is not synonymous with “Peace on Earth to men of good will.”

Just sound Catholic teaching. We can make no exceptions to the spirit of the season of Advent. And we need not be overly concerned about the world around us. We do not need to rush out to malls. We do not need to do what others are doing. And isn’t it about time that we withdrew from the popular culture once and for all? Why does it come as a surprise to some Catholics that Hollywood is getting bolder and bolder in producing overtly anti-Catholic motion pictures?

There is a solution to this: don’t go to movie theaters.

Please follow and like us: