Christ is Born! Merry Christmas!
Christ is born! Glorify Him!*
*traditional Orthodox Christmas greeting
It was a truly magnificent Christmas Day spent between my in-laws (whom we’re staying with on our visit home from seminary) and my Mom and brother. You will probably notice I did not mention anything about attending church today—more to come shortly on that topic. But first, an overview of events!
Christmas Eve
My wife’s family has many customs related to Christmas and it’s Eve, and many of those have found their way into our own celebration. On Christmas Eve, following the Vesperal Liturgy, we headed ‘home’ and enacted my wife’s traditional plan of watching Muppet Christmas Carol and having pizza while baking cookies. Once the children were in bed and asleep—this took until midnight since my nine-year-old was excited and having trouble going to sleep—we put all of the gifts under the tree and went to bed ourselves. We had an episode of The Expanse to watch, so we were able to pass the time fruitfully.
Aside - Obviously Santa Claus Exists
We choose to teach the kids that some (but not all) of their Christmas presents come from Santa Claus—a contested contention in these latter days. In our house, Santa Claus and St. Nicholas (celebrated on Dec 6) are two separate-but-related people. The kids get chocolate gold coins in their shoes for St. Nicholas Day in remembrance of the great saint who inspired the figure of Santa Claus, but it’s the guy in the red suit and 12 reindeer who brings them toys. Is it hypocritical? I think you can make an argument either way.
In the past, I followed the line of argumentation by a few of the New Atheists that, when children find out that Santa and the Tooth Fairy don’t exist, it also is a building block for shaking their belief in God. I, of course, did not want to shaken anyone’s belief in God, so therefore I should not promote Santa Claus. Even though I assented to this argument mentally, I still went along with my wife and the grandparents telling the kids about Santa because I didn’t want to rock the boat, but I felt bad about it. I did that for years until I discovered the work of Jonathan Pageau who made me feel good about Santa again (Make Santa Great Again?!?).
Jonathan created a video called Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy Exist that laid out his argument—in short, Santa’s existence goes far beyond Joe in the red suit at the mall or Sheila at the Post Office answering letters. When the children speak to Joe and Sheila, they are not speaking to Joe and Sheila but to Santa himself. When Joe in the suit and Sheila in her words answer the children, it is not they who are speaking but Santa.
You can watch the whole 20-minute presentation by Jonathan, but this 7-minute remix by Akira the Don contains all the highlights and has a nice lofi beat as well:
Christmas Day
The day itself was wonderful. Our Christmas morning tradition is the kids can get up early and have their stockings, but no one can open any presents until after breakfast. My nine-year-old woke up and came downstairs at 3:00 AM and we found her asleep on the couch with her stocking. We were able to sleep until 7:00 when my wife got up and put the traditional breakfast (blueberry stuffed french toast) in the oven and mimosas and coffee were made.
Eventually, breakfast was eaten and presents were opened. The kids made out like bandits, and I got a couple of wanted books (The Pilgrim’s Regress by C.S. Lewis and The Living Witness of the Holy Mountain by Archbishop Alexander Golitzen) and the gift I bought myself on Black Friday, a new Apple Watch to replace my previous S1 Apple Watch that died back in October. My wife, son, and in-laws all contributed to defray the cost. Since I’m picky about which size, color, etc. I wanted, it was easier for me to buy it on sale on Black Friday and have it shipped there. I need to get back into my weight loss program after several years of stalling, and having this as an activity monitor will be a good motivation.
Afterward, we drove to my Mother’s house 45 minutes away to have lunch (a Southern Christmas meal of ham and baked macaroni and cheese) and exchange a few more gifts, gaining two other nice books in the process. Four hours later, we headed back to my in-laws for a prime rib dinner and to watch the Saints demolish the Vikings. In the second half of the game, I started nodding off and was able to catch a 90-minute nap and woke up to gingerbread cake and homemade cinnamon ice cream. What a wonderful day!
What about Church?
As Eastern Orthodox, we always have a Matins and Divine Liturgy on Christmas morning. As an Eastern Orthodox seminarian hoping to one day be ordained, it is curious that I would not be at those services with my family. Why weren’t we? The short answer is, my wife has had to give up her home, her friends and family, and her home church for us to go to seminary. I didn’t want her to have to give up the traditional Christmas she’s had since she was a child (one of her gifts was having all of her family’s Christmas morning home movies transferred to DVD and we watched her open lots of She-Ra toys in Christmas 1988 in pretty much the exact same routine we had in 2020. She knows that there are, at most, two more Christmases like this until we adopt the standard Orthodox Christmas day routine.
I’d prefer to go ahead and make that move now, but since the next two Christmases will also have us staying with our in-laws, I have chosen to not push my own idea of wanting to be as proper as possible right away and instead let my wife and kids have two more traditional Compton family Christmases until we have to adjust everything four hours forward. It sounds like a tiny insignificant change to me, but it isn’t to her, and part of being a loving husband is trying to give my wife what she needs when I can and this is something I can give for two more years.
That said, it is now almost midnight, and I am reading and singing at the liturgy at 7:00 AM tomorrow, so I will stop there. Merry Christmas! Christ is Born! Glorify Him!