http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2001/12/25/nyview25.htm

It still makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

When the white stars talk together like sisters
And when the winter hills
Raise their grand semblance in the freezing night,
Somewhere one window
Bleeds like the brown eye of an open force.

Hills, stars,
White stars that stand above the eastern stable.

Look down and offer Him.
The dim adoring light of your belief.
Whose small Heart bleeds with infinite fire.

Shall not this Child
(When we shall hear the bells of His amazing voice)
Conquer the winter of our hateful century?

And when His Lady Mother leans upon the crib,
Lo, with what rapiers
Those two loves fence and flame their brillancy!

Here in this straw lie planned the fires
That will melt all our sufferings:
He is our Lamb, our holocaust!

And one by one the shepherds, with their snowy feet,
Stamp and shake out their hats upon the stable dirt,
And one by one kneel down to look upon their Life.

-- Thomas Merton

Blessings to you all this night.

I just posted a version of that story

Family tradition -- my father always read that section (more both before and after) on Christmas Eve, before we'd go and open our one present of the evening -- the rest were saved for Christmas Day (a compromise from one family where all were opened on the eve and one where all were opened on the day). On the Day, the stockings were opened before breakfast (and always had a Droste Chocolate Orange at the top, pistachios and a real silver dollar at the bottom -- the silver dollars stopped about 1970). There was a Specific Christmas Carol record that my parents played, and I don't know what it was. The youngest always got to open the first present (in all the stages, Eve, stocking, main day). Then it was off to the big family celebration, which had its own traditions.

New traditions -- visiting my brother and his kids and wife's family on Christmas Eve, opening the presents for visitors. This year, my brother did the reading that my father used to, and I was quite touched. And coming here, and finding it again, I think on what it's meant to me over the years.

Weal and frith and witfulness to you and yours all the year's length long.

I liked that.

Merry Christmas.

And thanks for the Particles link on a Presbyterian defence of Christmas. Even the atheist Presbyterian conscience is a weird thing.

While I was hanging up the Christmas cards in vaguely thematic strings (robins, Santas, Nativity scenes, sparkly things, etc) I shuffled together a series of cards showing the Three Wise Men, and I found myself wondering what the traditional theological significance of that story is. And I knew this very thread was the place to ask.

On the face of it, it's a very odd and anomalous story. Three Magi who might be astrologers coming to worship Jesus! What's going on here? I know that tradition has made them kings and given them names, but what else has been said about them?

A few years ago I went to a thing at the Planetarium around Christmas which was mostly interesting scientific possibilities for the Star, including Clarke's "The Star". One of the things they said was that the story of the Magi:

a) Gave a biblical justification for astrology (run away!)

b) Was an example of the Gospel writers trying to appeal to other kinds of Mediterranean mystery religions than Judaism, though you'd expect it to be Luke who mentions them and it isn't. Luke, the Greek, has the domestic down-home shepherds.

c) Is an example of a story where a tiny fire (the biblical source, never mind the origin of that) has provided a huge amount of smoke, because the star and the journey and the kings appeals to people.

Maligayang pasko.

I also remember being told once that the word for "inn" could also be translated "guest room." I sort of like that image -- Joseph's family won't let them stay in the house, because of Mary. I can imagine them all whispering about Mary being loose and Joseph a fool, commenting on how Mary wearing blue is so out-of-style, and giving her a cold shoulder at mealtimes.

Merry Christmas

Re the magi: I don't know what theologians say, but I've always assumed them to be inserted as a literary device to provide a larger context for the birth (as Ted Curtis and Marilee said above), but I've also heard it said that shepherds were considered very unclean because they handled and lived among animals, and so their replacement with magi might have been to appeal to those who would otherwise look down their noses at this nascent religion.

May all of you have what you need, now and in the future.
May all of you be visited by joy.
May all of you give and recieve love.

My personal favorite Christmas recording? Ki ho'alo Christmas, from Dancing Cat.

http://www.kbeamer.com/kalikimaka.html

Sentimental? You bet. But the "Christmas Memories" song reminds me not Christmases at my grandparents' and I love slack key.

Throwing the Magi into the picture may have been a suggestion that Christianity had something to offer the Zoroastrians, as well as the Jews and the other gentiles. The Mithraic cult so popular among the Roman army was Zoroastrian in origin, and Manicheanism manages to be both a Christian and a Zoroastrian heresy, which is a pretty neat trick when you think about it.

Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, has shown to the world the light of wisdom! For by it, those who worshipped the stars, were taught by a star to adore Thee, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know Thee, the Orient on high. O Lord, Glory to Thee!

The Magi might have recognized an astrological event as a precusor to Christ's coming, but the point was to teach them not the stars but the Son of God is to be worshipped.

In any case, at Christmas we Orthodox say "Christ is Born! Glorify Him!" today (or next month, depending on the calendar (Gregorian or Julian) used.)

Christ is born!

A bright Brumalia, a scintillating solstice, a yipping Yule, and a merry Christmas to all!

We've got a bunch of family traditions-- my father's family is Polish, so we do a traditional Christmas Eve dinner that's gotten more raucous over the years-- some of which may or may not show up in my own blog (we have a digital camera, now, and thus pictures...).

The one that seems appropriate here, though, is that every Christmas Eve, my father would read to us (my sister and me) from a tattered little paperback copy of "A Child's Christmas in Wales" that was a gift from my godmother on my first Christmas (according to the note she wrote in it, at least-- I don't claim to remember it). It lived in a blue paper envelope in the armoire in my parents' bedroom the rest of the year, and only got dragged out on Christmas Eve, but bits and pieces of it have lodged themselves forever in my memory-- snowballs thrown at the fire, "Would you like anything to read?," Aunts and Uncles, and a small dry voice on the far side of the keyhole.

We forgot to make him read it this year (though we did talk about it at dinner on Christmas Day), and it's just not the same reading it silently to myself.

The astrological event in question was a triple conjunction of Jupiter and Mars (that is, Jupiter and Mars were within each other's orbs three times in fairly rapid succession) in August of 4 BCE. I'm told that Jupiter represents Kingship and Mars represent(ed/s) the Jews to Babylonian astrologues; thus they concluded it had to do with the King of the Jews. They were "following the stars" rather than following a star; and if a huge flare of light had appeared above a stable in Bethlehem, a whole lot more people than that would have come!

The gifts that they bring in Matthew are all grave goods of one sort or another. This is to prophesy his death. I actually wrote a Christmas carol (well, OK, it's a Christmas/Epiphany carol) about this. It's on my stack of "arrange this for the choir someday" stuff. Well behind the Et Egressus, the Ave Maria, and the Nunc Dimittis.