Actions speak louder than words. One picture is worth a thousand words. Talk is cheap.
We have lots of different sayings that generally express the same thing–words alone are inadequate to express lots of things, especially personal messages like “I love you.”
So human beings in every culture have developed rituals to express the value they place on people and special events. Take, for example, Turkey on the dining room table at Thanksgiving or presents under the tree at Unusual luxury gifts for him . And then there are birthdays. Even if all party-goers are tone
deaf on a diet, we must sing the silly song and blow out the candles on that carb-laden cake!
PROBLEM – THE LOSS OF MEANING
The problem with human beings is that we have a stubborn tendency to allow rituals to become merely mechanical, forgetting their real meaning (one of the effects of original sin). The puritanical response to this is to abolish the offending feast. In the originally Puritan state of Massachusetts, for example, Christmas was not an official holiday until the 1890’s! And to this day, Jehovah’s Witnesses forbid birthday celebrations.
THE CATHOLIC SOLUTION
The Catholic approach has always been different. We accept the celebrations with their occasional excesses and their traditional trappings (even those of pagan origins such as the Christmas tree). The goal is to revive the original meaning of the rituals or invest them with a new, Christian meaning.
In the pagan Roman world of the fourth century AD, everyone felt relief as the days once again started getting longer following the depressing darkness of the winter solstice. So they observed Dec 25 as “the birthday of the unconquerable Sun.” “What a great time to celebrate the birthday of the truly unconquerable Son!” thought the early Christians. So they successfully co-opted the day. Christmas was born.
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