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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
January 4, 2004
Family
My own view -- it is the view I take most frequently in this column -- is that the eve and full twelve days of Christmas plus Epiphany should be public holidays. (Today being the 11th day of Christmas tomorrow "Twelfth Night" and the eve of the Epiphany.) Also for that matter a couple of weeks around Easter and perhaps thirty of the more prominent saints days angelic and other feasts the Pentecost of course and so prominent a fast as Ash Wednesday. Call me mediaeval (it's been done before) I long for the restoration of some pattern in our lives some general acknowledgement of liturgical meaning in the times and seasons. Would this be good for the economy? I shouldn't think so. But then I don't think everything we do should be good for the economy. There are enough days left to take care of that and besides our economy is much too efficient. There is a great deal of excess wealth around us and this would help mop some of it up. Perhaps the reader will object that not everyone is a Catholic Christian (that's been done before too) but I can't say this bothers me. I accept bank holidays myself though I am not a banker. It would be easy enough to accommodate any considerable number of Jews or Hindus or Muslims -- whoever -- by granting them their own alternative holy days their fasts and festivals -- thus reciprocally keeping a few shops open on days like today. If that's "multiculturalism" then I'll eat halal. There remain a number of old-fashioned Calvinists and others of our separated Christian brethren who object to all holidays not Sundays. (I love these people they are as crazy as I am.) If my countrymen will accept me as the national dictator I promise not to force anyone to take a holiday that might make him feel uncomfortable. And to "persons of no religion" I shall be happy to grant no holidays at all. For the rest I think not only should we have holidays but holidays with some point to them. If there were for instance a real public demand for that "bank holiday" in August that's all to the good -- but call it what it is the day in which we celebrate banks. I don't myself celebrate banks as much as perhaps I should (St. Matthew is incidentally the patron of bankers). I find they fall short of my minimum requirement for the numinous. But they are not entirely without their virtues and one mustn't be too prim. There is no religion without holidays but more to the point vice versa: there are no holidays which do not establish a public religion (as we were all reminded by the French Revolution). To those who "believe" in the total separation of Church and State let me just say that you will never achieve it. For the moment you have made every holiday strictly "secular" and muffled every bell that would peal on Christmas morning you have created a state religion. A vacuous religion an ugly religion a viciously intolerant religion to be sure -- but nevertheless a religion. The great majority of Canadians are as we have been since Cartier first landed professing Christians of one kind or another. That those who profess for the purpose of a survey do not necessarily practise what they profess is an observation neither new nor surprising. For as I've written myself we are far gone in our national apostasy. It is hard to make people today care -- care to the point where they will act -- about the stripping away of everything that confers meaning and nobility upon our public life. But that is hardly a reason to give up on them. On the contrary it is a reason to try harder to re-establish what is good. And good not only in my own dim sight but in at least the subliminal understanding of the great majority. They need awakening to the fact that there is no neutrality -- that there can be no public government that is strictly indifferent between one cause and another. A society is not either Christian or neutral; it is Christian or it becomes something else. Nor is this distinction casual. For in the whole history of the world over the last twenty centuries it should be clear enough that it is the rare non-Christian society or state in which Christians are not actively persecuted. If we fail to assert ourselves we are asking for what we get. Which takes me back to Christmas -- not the day itself alone but the whole traditional twelve-day season of feast and family coming after the month-long preparation of Advent. It was something that emerged over the centuries of Christianity not merely as outward symbol but as way of life -- a source of joy. We have reversed that today have allowed it to be reversed so that Christmas has become in the popular clich? a celebration of commerce. A shopping binge now overlays the ancient moderation of Advent leading to a grand pig-out Christmas day -- followed by emptiness. We go on diets the "Boxing Week" clear-out sales begin. The beginning of the festival has been turned into its end; so that by now my reader may only realize it is the 11th day of Christmas because I have told him. There is the devil in this: for Christmas itself has been used to kill the spirit of Christmas. What was that spirit? A celebration of the nativity. At its heart the coming of Our Lord but in and around the cr?che: "Mary mother of her Lord; Joseph chosen to protect her; Jesus subject to their word." It was in other words no accident or mere convenience that the Christmas season just passing from us has been over time our principal gathering of family often from afar. It was built around the exemplary story of the Holy Family made the model in our own homes -- children and parents grandchildren and grandparents brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles with their wives and husbands and children; to say nothing of the people we' ve adopted. A place for everyone at the table and somewhere among us the Christ child. Not family in abstract but Christian family reaching out over generations and relations and to all the earth in "peace and goodwill". David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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