Why everyone gets the Christmas season wrong
The death of Advent and the forty days no one celebrates
This essay is about how the Advent went from 4 weeks of fasting in purple vestments to a 60-day shopping countdown: How we traded recollection for consumption, and lost Christmas in the process.
Between the 26th and 31st of December every year, the pavements in my neighbourhood are filled with fallen Christmas trees. Full pines, still strung with silver tinsel. Sometimes not even shaken out. They do not even make it to Epiphany (January 6th), which is the original Christmas Feast.
It is a time when nothing really happens. People have visited their families for Christmas, and offices are still open; but not really productive.
Each year, the Christmas season seems to start earlier. Decorations in shops appear in October. Advertisements call it ‘the most wonderful time’ before the clocks have changed. You hear songs on the radio, the lights go up, the markets open. And then, when the feast has just started, it is all dismantled.
By New Year’s Eve, any trace of Christmas is gone. Two months of premature festivity, climaxing in a single day of exhaustion, then thrown to the kerb like that tree.
To see what most get wrong about Christmas, you have to start earlier.
It all begins with the Advent. And even most Catholics are barely aware of what the Advent is.
The season that vanished
Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas. Historically it started at Saint Martin’s Day, and ended January 6th, Epiphany. It is a full season in its own right. Nowadays it lasts about 28 days, more or less. But it is not a celebration, rather a time of preparation and penance.
The liturgical colour is purple, shared with Lent. The tone is penitential, though gentler. The readings trace the longing of Israel for the Messiah. And in the final week, the O Antiphons rise like candle flames in the dark: O Sapientia, O Adonai, O Radix Jesse. Each one a cry: Come.
The Advent season is structured and has form. The Church assigned it four theological themes:
The Incarnation – The Word made flesh.
The Second Coming – Not just the memory of the first, but the preparation for the return.
Remission of Sin – The soul turned inward in penitence.
Spiritual Rebirth – The heart remade in Christ at Christmas.
A full spiritual architecture, never meant to be a countdown, but as a clearing of the ground.
In my church, the Rorate Mass is still offered. ‘Roráte caéli désuper,
et núbes plúant jústum’ — Drop down, ye heavens, from above,
and let the skies pour down righteousness.
It is celebrated on the Ember Wednesday in the Advent, in darkness before dawn, lit only by candles. In a cold church the priest chants the liturgy by firelight.
That is a metaphor for Advent. A season in the dark. Not a prelude to Christmas consumption. It is a distinct time, with its own discipline, silence, and reason for existing.
But it barely exists now, even amongst Catholics.
The inversion of Christmas
What we now call the ‘Christmas season’ begins early November, sometimes earlier. It arrives with decorations, music, films, parties, lights, advertising and a carefully managed sense of joy. Nativity scenes, if they appear at all, often show Christ already in the manger. The feast begins during the fast
And then, on the 25th of December, it is finished. In the Netherlands we have the 26th as ‘The Second Day of Christmas’ (which is there because Protestants found it unfair they had so few Feast Days, compared with Catholics).
But this is the inversion. Advent is a season of restraint, but has become Christmas. And Christmas, which was once a season of celebration, has been reduced to 48 hours. In the West, the 25th is presented as the climax, although it was not always the principal feast. In earlier centuries, and still today in Eastern Europe, Epiphany is the greater celebration. Yet by the 6th of January, no one is thinking about Christmas. It has already gone.
Their tree went up in November. And by the time Christmas Day arrives, the entire performance is already collapsing. The sparkle has worn off, children are overstimulated, and the adults are exhausted. No sense of culmination, only relief that it is over.
The older calendar moved in the opposite direction. Advent came first, then Christmas, with its brightness, feasting, and sense of arrival. The darkness prepared the ground for the light. And restraint gave shape to the joy. In this way the Feast made sense.
But not only has that structure been forgotten, it has been reversed.
The rhythms that shaped the year, liturgical and natural alike, have been set aside. There is no Advent, but neither is there Lent. No one knows Epiphany, Ascension or Time after Pentecost any more. Our calendars are completely detached from any natural cycle. Everything now arrives early, burns out quickly and leaves no trace. Whether it is Easter, Christmas or even the Ramadan.
To live without rhythm is to live unnaturally. By doing so you reject the shape of time, the need for silence before speech, for modesty before feast, and darkness before dawn.
But without preparation, celebration is hollow. Without silence, joy is nothing but noise.
And without seasons, life is always the same.
The 40 days of Christmas
Christmas does not end on 25 December. It has just started, and has so many liturgically rich feasts, even most Catholics take for granted.
It runs until 2 February: the Feast of the Presentation, also called Candlemas. There is a candle procession to commemorate Christ’s entrance into the Temple:
‘Now, Master, you let your servant go in peace. You have fulfilled your promise. My own eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all peoples. A light to bring the Gentiles from darkness; the glory of your people Israel.’
(Luke 2, 25–32, Roman Breviary)
The Christmas season includes the Feast of the Epiphany, when Christ is revealed to the Gentiles. It includes the Baptism of the Lord, and unfolds through the darkest part of the year as a season of light and joy.
Candlemas marks the end. Mary and Joseph bring the child to the temple. Simeon lifts the infant Christ and says, Mine eyes have seen thy salvation, a light to lighten the Gentiles. The candles are blessed. The light that came at Christmas is offered to the world.
And then, only then, does the season close.
What we are left with
The yearly calendar was not an aesthetic flourish, but pedagogy, for it trained the soul in rhythm: from fast to feast, from darkness to light, and finally from longing to fulfilment.
You cannot feast every day, because then it ceases to be a feast. And you cannot live in permanent celebration, because it becomes hollow.
That is why positivity gurus, in my opinion, only make matters worse.
Advent gave Christmas meaning, so when the season arrived, it felt like an arrival. And it lasted, because joy needed time to unfold. It was not supposed to be rushed. It should not be crammed into a single evening.
But we do not live in this rhythm now. We have commercial cycles instead. We have sales events, Black Friday and Boxing Day, Cyber Monday and New Year’s detoxes.
November and December have become frantic excess, followed by January and a feast to celebrate depression: Blue Monday.
Commemorate Advent while it stills lasts, to better prepare yourself for the Feasts to come…
-Robbert
You had me up to "Ordinary Time". This is also a modern corruption. There are no gaps in the real Catholic liturgical cycle, no empty spaces where nothing important happens. Candlemas closes the Christmas cycle and Septuagesima begins the Lent-Easter cycle.
Where do they have street garbage cans like that?