Catholics! Keep Your Trees Up!

New Year’s Day promises two certainties: college football bowl games and Christmas trees on the curb. To Catholics, of course, January 1 is the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. It's a Holy Day of Obligation, and the final day of the Octave of Christmas.

The Church, however, is so generous with joy. She does not end our celebration of the Incarnation with the conclusion of the Octave of Christmas. She extends it to Epiphany. Twelfth Night, as our English-speaking brethren call it, is an event Catholics in America should celebrate with more enthusiasm (think: roaring bonfires, grilled meat, lots of singing, red wine, brown ale) and might very well do if it were observed here on the Liturgical Calendar on January 6 as it is England, Australia, and Canada, to say nothing of Vatican City.

But the celebrating doesn’t stop there! After Epiphany, the revelry continues until the Baptism of the Lord, the first Sunday after January 6 (usually). This year, Catholics may very well wish to keep their decorations up through January 11. And if you want to be really traditional, you can celebrate what the faithful called “Christmastide” before the liturgical reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council. In the old rite, or what we today call the Extraordinary Form, Christmastide lasted for 40 days to correspond with the 40 days of Lent, and the 40 days from Easter to Ascension Thursday.

A 40-day party? Gloria in Excelsis! (And people say Trad Cats are a dour bunch.)

Christmastide ended on February 2, the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also called Candlemas Day. On this day, the faithful take candles that they will use throughout the year in their homes to Mass to have them blessed.

Here is how the brilliant Benedictine Abbot Dom Prosper Guéranger helps us understand the totality of the mystery of Christmastide:

We apply the name of Christmas to the 40 days, which begin with the Nativity of Our Lord, December 25, and end with the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, February 2. It is a period, which forms a distinct portion of the Liturgical Year, as distinct, by its own special spirit, from every other, as are Advent, Lent, Easter or Pentecost. One same Mystery is celebrated and kept in view the whole 40 days. Neither the Feasts of the Saints, which so abound during this Season; nor the time of Septuagesima, with its mournful Purple, which often begins before Christmastide is over, seem able to distract our Holy Mother the Church from the immense joy with which She received the glad tidings from the Angels (Luke 2:10) on that glorious Night for which the world had been longing for 4000 years. The custom of celebrating the Solemnity of Our Savior's Nativity by a Feast of 40 days' duration is founded on the Holy Gospel itself; for it tells us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, after spending 40 days in the contemplation of the Divine Fruit of Her glorious Maternity, went to the Temple, there to fulfill, in most perfect humility, the ceremonies which the Law demanded of the daughters of Israel when they became mothers. The Feast of Mary's Purification is, therefore, part of that of Jesus' Birth; and the custom of keeping this holy and glorious period of 40 days as one continued Festival has every appearance of being a very ancient one, at least in the Roman Church.

The feast in the new rite is called the Presentation of the Lord—same joyful event, different emphasis, but if you really want to be a “sign of contradiction” (get it?) do as they did in ages past! Keep your tree and your decorations up until Candlemas!

And yet you lay gifts at the foot of your so-called "Christmas Tree" ...

"the tale of two brothers,"

What the Babylonians believe about the origin of the Christmas tree:

the new evergreen tree symbolized that Nimrod had come to life again in Tammuz!

Walsh, Curiosities of Popular Customs

Are you one of the many with their "backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east ...", and insistent on teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, rather than OBEYING GOD?

>Good grief ya’ll have a lot of rules to follow.<

If you hold down a job and are expected to arrive by a specific time; if you own a home and want to maintain your investment by making repairs; if you have a family and hope to hold it together, then you also have rules to follow.

How is ensuring the salvation of one's soul by requiring them to attend church any different?

Because when Jesus died he nailed all of our sins to the cross. That is what ensures our salvation.

Acts 16:29-33

And he called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas, 30and after he brought them out, he said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

31They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32And they spoke the word of the Lord to him together with all who were in his house. 33And he took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds, and immediately he was baptized, he and all his household.

Colossians 2:8-14

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

9For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,

10and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;

11and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ;

12having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

13When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,

14having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Outside of faith there is nothing we can do to ensure our salvation. It's all been done by Him.

Today, tens of millions of beautiful trees, which COULD become huge, mature Douglas firs, spruce, balsams, or other kinds of conifers, and which COULD be used to build millions of homes, or produce resins, paper, and dozens of useful products, are instead cut down, then shipped via truck and rail to distribution points, then stood up, to have a base nailed to them, and sold to "Christians" to take indoors and decorate with orbs and bulbs.

Not really. These trees come from Christmas Tree Farms and are grown specifically for this purpose. This is no different from visiting a nursery in spring to pick out some tomato or zucchini plants that will grow for one season and then be tossed onto the mulch pile. My Christmas tree, when taken down, will be used to provide shelter for birds in winter and eventually return to the earth as mulch to nourish other plants.

Whether one worships the tree or not is irrelevant, the point is, if the pagan world cut trees out of the forest, decorates them, and makes them part of their pagan religion, as Jer. 10 says they did, which was THE WAY OF THE HEATHEN, then that is what we should NOT do.

To adopt the way of the heathen and then call it by a Christian name, is very wrong, regardless to whether we actually worship the tree or not.

Somebody has already posted this verse, I think it deserves repeating:

“And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them, THAT THEY SHOULD NOT DO LIKE THEM” (2 Kings 17:15).

Christians are doing “like them,” a heathen practice, whether they worship the tree or not.

Did Jesus SAY to celebrate His Birth?

You love to cite scripture. Did Jesus Christ write down any part of the New Testament with His own hand? No, He did not. If the Bible was to be the sole authority of the Church, shouldn't the Founder have written down His Own teachings? Shouldn't He have at least stated something similar to the following: "the written works of My disciples will be the authority upon which My Church is based?"

Did Jesus Christ with His own mouth instruct His disciples to "write down" His teachings? No. With the possible exception of the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) by St. John the Apostle, Jesus Christ gives no such instructions to any of His disciples or Apostles. In fact, only the Apostles Sts. Peter, John, James, Jude and Matthew were inspired by the Holy Spirit to write Scripture. Why were the other seven not inspired of the Holy Spirit to "write" if the "written" Word of God is the ONLY authority to be followed in the Christian religion?

Does the Bible state It is the sole or final authority of Christianity? No. Neither this statement nor anything even close to it appears anywhere in the New Testament. In fact, Christ said that the Church is to resolve disputes among Christians, not Scripture (Matthew 18:17).

Is the Bible to be taken literally - "word for word?" No. The Bible doesn't state anywhere that It should be taken literally. The Bible was written by different authors with different literary styles at different times in history and in different languages. Therefore, the writings should be interpreted with these circumstances in mind. The Bible is a religious book, not a scientific or a history "textbook."

Is private interpretation of the Bible condoned in the Bible Itself? No, it is not (2 Peter 1:20). Was individual interpretation of Scripture practiced by the early Christians or the Jews? Again, "NO" (Acts 8:29-35). The assertion that individuals can correctly interpret Scripture is false.

Can there be more than one interpretation of the Bible? No. The word "truth" is used several times in the New Testament. However, the plural version of the word "truth" never appears in Scripture. Therefore, there can only be one Truth.

Is the Bible the sole "teaching from God?" No. The Bible Itself states that their are "oral" teachings and traditions that are to be carried on to the present-day (2 Thessalonians 2:15; 1 Corinthians 11:2; 2 Timothy 2:2; Romans 10:17; 1 Peter 1:24-25).

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.