As anyone knows who has been out shopping in this strange electoral Winter of 2016 knows, the stores — as some have been since before Hallowe’en — are filled with Christmas trappings. Many of the music stations are playing a straight month of anodyne “holiday music” — with only the occasional “First Noel” or “Do You Hear What I hear?” to remind easy listening fans of the religious roots of the holiday. For all that, the usual war against Christmas seems muted this year; perhaps because so many of its paladins are still shell-shocked by Mr. Trump’s victory, and have other things to contemplate than de-Christianising Yule-tide.

Even so, we have fallen a long way from the days when movie theatres routinely gave their patrons quasi-religious Christmas greetings, and nary a “holiday” party or activity could be found. Whatever else one said about the theological content of such films as Miracle on 34th Street or A Christmas Carol, there could be no question as to what holiday they were about. The general atmosphere of good cheer and good will is precisely what the character Auntie Mame was asking for in the Jerry Herman song quoted above. Although he is Jewish, Herman (as with Irving Berlin in White Christmas) was able to grasp at least the external feelings generated by Christmas without the need to feel offended.
That grasp, compounded with the sort of vestigial religiosity exhibited by such things as the movie theatre greetings linked to above epitomise the Christmases of my childhood. The cultus of Santa Claus (complete with reindeer led by Rudolph, elves, the North Pole, Mrs. Claus, his own presence at Macy’s, and all the rest) mingles in my memory with the cold of a Westchester County winter, the Santa Claus Lane Parade (after we moved to Hollywood), Midnight Mass, the Christmas Tree, Nativity set, religious carols, and, of course, the presents in the morning and Christmas dinner that night. All I need to bring back those far off days and the memory of my beloved parents is to drive around in the relative chill of Southern California in December, and enjoy the Christmas lights in such places as Altadena’s Christmas Tree Lane, Pasadena’s Hastings Ranch, and San Marino’s St. Alban’s Road. One of the few things that distinguished our Christmases from our neighbours’ was that we NEVER put up the tree until Christmas Eve. Truly, if all Christmas were about was my personal nostalgia, my cup would runneth over this time of year, for all that I am colder, sadder, and older than the little boy who thrilled to hear his father recite “Twas the Night Before Christmas” and sing “Minuit, chretiens.”
But in truth, that culture of Christmas — for all its eggnog and hot roasted chestnuts — was in itself a stage in the feast’s decay. Writing in the late 1940’s or early 1950’s, in a lecture that was later published as part of his 1958 book. Bread of Life, Fr. Leonard Feeney made an observation that may seem to harshly conflict with the generic feeling of comfort we have been describing:

As with so much else Fr. Feeney said, our modern sensibilities are easily offended — though given what we do tolerate, those sensibilities may not be the best guide to moral reality. I love Frosty the Snowman and A Charlie Brown Christmas as much as anyone. But if they detract from our clear view of the true reason for celebrating Christmas, they are not merely amusing or silly — they are evil. Not because of any intrinsic wickedness on their part, but because of our allowing them to veil from us the literally awe-full reality of Christmas to any degree. As Fr. Feeney wrote in Hail Mary, “One does not say, in true Catholic faith, on the twenty-fifth of December, ‘This wasChristmas Day.’ One says, ‘This is Christmas Day.’ … When one says the Holy Rosary and meditates on the mystery of the Nativity, it is not by way of something which once happened and is now over. It is by way of something which once happened and is never over.” What appears to be harshness on his part was frustration at how the truth of Christmas was — and is — smothered under a pile of tinsel. But despite all that, it need not be so for us, in our homes and wherever we have influence.
It is important, first of all, to remember that Christmas is the beginning of our Salvation — the first time Christ comes to us, as a little child. The second also occurs continually and tangibly, in His daily descent into Bread and Wine on all the altars of Christendom. The third shall be at the end of time, when He comes in glory and majesty to judge the living and the dead — rewarding those who hailed Him as an Infant and in the Blessed Sacrament, and allowing those who refused to do so to reap what they have sown. Each of us will be in either company on that dread day — and most of us shall have spent time in both camps. May we all persevere in staying on the right side!
If we make the reality of Christmas the centre of our celebration, however, the attendant customshanded down to us, so far from being a distraction become a positively useful method of honouring this central and eternal mystery. No less than Dom Prosper Gueranger in his Liturgical Year speaks of the value of such customs at Christmas and Epiphany: