Explainer
Creed
Digital
Time
3 min read

A digital today needs an old calendar

What’s the relevance of an ancient church calendar to life today? Julie Canlis explores its origins and why it is still applicable in today’s digital world.

Julie connects Christian spirituality with ordinary life in Wenatchee, Washington State, where she teaches and writes.

A ancient illustration showing five rows of saints in profile on a book cover.
A Calendar of Saints and Festivals.
Metropolitan Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons.

Christians have an odd belief that their little lives are somehow joined up to the very life of God. 

And not just God ‘generally’ or in a spiritual sense, but that they are interconnected to the life of someone who lived 2,000 years ago. That they have his ‘spirit.’ That he lives in them, and they in him. 

They built cathedrals on this foundation. They faced lions for this claim. They reoriented their sense of time. They believed that in dying, they would meet him - a person - all the sooner, face to face. One of the first early Christian bishops begged his congregation to not try and stop him from entering the gladiatorial arena and going not to his death (as one would think) but, as he eloquently urged, to his birth.  

These cultural relics grew from the soil of a deep conviction 

It is in this context alone that we can understand something of the significance of things like Easter, Christmas, Michaelmas, Whitsuntide, and all the other festivals that shape our heritage. These cultural relics grew from the soil of a deep conviction that humans could keep step with the life of God, because he had kept step with them, in their skin. These were not celebrations of an ossified past, but of a living present - celebrating what had and was happening to them, in them. 

And so these early preachers and teachers told their congregations that Christmas is not Jesus' birth, but their birth. That through these festivals, they were not remembering his past but the mystery that their present was forever bound with his past and future. And because they had died and been raised with him in baptism (an ongoing reality that was celebrated both annually at Easter, and weekly on Sunday which was called a ’little Easter‘) they were to now keep in step with him by caring for the poor (St Nicholas), feeding the hungry (St Thecla), preaching to the birds (St Francis), reconciling towns (St Martin), and averting war (St Leo - who met with Attila the Hun). There were goodies and baddies. There were odd ducks and beautiful virgins. Recluses and repentant sinners. They were an odd, but galvanized lot around the history of a man from Palestine, in whose shoes they sought to walk and to whom they believed they were mystically united. 

Strange. But perhaps no odder than our own times, with our own calendar with our important festivals galvanizing our sense of nationalism, or our identity as consumers. The fiscal year. The academic year. The consumer cycle. We need something to hallow our days.  

I am caught up in a transcendent pattern that offers me an escape from the narrowness of my echo-chambers, my appetites, my loneliness 

So what are we to do with this ancient calendar, filled with its colourful saints and high days and holy fare? I don't know about you, but I need its naive defiance that my life, lived in my ordinary home on my ordinary street in my ordinary family, is somehow connected to something much larger than myself. That year after year I am caught up in a transcendent pattern that offers me an escape from the narrowness of my echo-chambers, my appetites, my loneliness. That my suffering need not destroy me. That my career (or its 24/7 maintenance due to the digital revolution) is not worth the price of my soul. This calendar provided our forebears with an opportunity for an inner journey, an acknowledgement of our hunger for life beyond the material. And perhaps it is time that we listened to their wisdom, if only by lighting a candle or eating a goose on Michaelmas day. Or maybe, just maybe, we might attend to that inner call that asks us how to hallow our lives, and welcome the one who hallows all time. 

Snippet
Awe and wonder
Christmas culture
Creed
Music
4 min read

Nine Lessons and Carols needs to be long

The carol service that take time to pull at the golden thread of Christmas.
Choristers stand and sing in choir stalls in a church
BBC.

I have decided that I will make it an annual ritual to grumpily defend a Christmas tradition that I love. Last year it was the traditional Nativity Play. This year it is the traditional carol service. For over a hundred years, at King’s College Chapel at least, the traditional Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols has borne witness to the very best of Anglican liturgy. The service combines candlelight, communal and choir carol singing, and lessons from Holy Scripture in a beautifully evocative manner. I adore the service, and it is very much a highlight of my Advent contemplation.

I am thrilled to say that carol services seem to be as popular as ever! I can hardly name a church that won’t be putting one on, either solo or uniting with other parishes. This warms my heart…and yet a shard of ice remains. A small, but very important gripe: editing. I notice that many services don’t follow the traditional pattern of nine lessons. Some have six. Some five. Some only a few, focusing as much as possible on the carol singing. I have a few clergy friends who enjoy giving me a gentle ribbing when I tell them my plans: “Oh you’re not doing ALL NINE are you!? Oh dear! It’ll be so long!” 

Brevity can be a virtue, and the Church hasn’t always cultivated it. I understand people have busy lives, and that very few of us want to be out late on a cold, wintry evening. I know that mince pies and mulled wine are as close to an irresistible temptation as there could be. I know that 30 to 45 minutes of hymn singing with a bit of Bible seems so lovely and compact. I understand all of this. 

However, I want to argue in favour of keeping all nine lessons: the length is the point! 

We end with a meditation on primordial concepts that cannot be truly comprehended by any mortal, and can only be put to paper in poetry. 

Some of the lessons are long (I’m looking at you Genesis!), and some a wonderfully pithy. It starts at the very beginning of the Bible and spends a good deal of time – nearly half of the readings – meditating on Genesis and Isaiah before we even begin to get to the baby Jesus, and the manger, and the shepherds, and the wise men. We seem to take ages not actually reading about the Story of Christmas…and this is VITAL! 

The traditional carol service concludes with the Prologue of John, that masterful exposition of the theology of the Incarnation, the perfect encapsulation of what a Christian believes is the truth, and the light, and the meaning of Jesus being born in a stable in Bethlehem. The service concludes with mention of the Word, of pre-existence, of Creation, of light defeating darkness, of salvation wrought through spirit and not flesh. We end with a meditation on primordial concepts that cannot be truly comprehended by any mortal, and can only be put to paper in poetry…and yet this is the true meaning of Christmas, and the true meaning of the Scriptures. Everything from Genesis 1.1 has been leading up to this, and everything written in Scripture only makes sense in light of these remarkable verses by John (or so Christians believe). 

When defending the traditional Nativity, I wrote about narrative and story and how they are fundamental to understanding our place in the world and the very meaning of our lives. The same can be said about the full nine lessons. Starting at the Fall of Mankind in the Garden of Eden, stopping to ponder the mercy and promise of God to Abraham and Isaac, being confronted with the wonderful Prophecies of Isaiah (the promise of peace and joy in the Kingdom of God), and then charting the story of the miraculous Birth of Christ, we see the underlying narrative thread of all Scripture: God loves His creation, God makes a promise to His creation, God keeps His promise and brings salvation and reconciliation to His creation. The Christmas story is wonderful and joyous, but it is an act in a larger drama, and we cannot truly understand it (or how it relates to the Prologue of John) if we don’t allow ourselves to encounter the whole story. 

Perhaps I’m putting too much emphasis and expectation on a single service in the year. Carol Services are celebratory, and anything that makes them accessible to as many people as possible is not something I want to malign…but…I pray that the full sweep of Scripture, the full and precious golden thread of the narrative of Scripture, is not lost. It is the meaning of Christmas, and it is the meaning of life, and it fills me with joy when it is celebrated with fellowship, singing, and worship. 

Anyway, grump over. I’m going to eat a mince pie.

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