Celebrating Christmas can be understood to mean many different things to people…that’s obvious…but I was moved to write a few words about today’s readings (despite knowing these words will be received by many like a wet blanket the dog slept on being placed under the family Christmas dinner!}.
 
Christmas dinner: that great, gluttonous gorge-fest of goodies we integrate into celebrating the birth of the Saviour, and why not: the turkey population needs an annual culling and we must all do our part.
To be clear. I do the same. I’m not judging. But is all this eating really giving honour and glory to God for giving us his only-begotten Son?
Or is it perhaps an excuse for us to serve the flesh with abandon, and without any shame whatsoever?
 
Could be either, but not both at the same time with the same person. Read on.
 
Perhaps the integration of the consumption of bounteous amounts of the finest foods far beyond the physical requirements for sustenance on Christmas – where we are careful to have baked enough to ensure smooth gorging for days following that one great family meal – is simply to ensure leisure to spend time with family and friends, having food prepared ahead of time. Either way, it’s usually good food, the best of the year, and there’s usually lots of it for many days, although I suppose this year with inflation that may have curtained the celebrating for some, perhaps many.
So as I downed my 5th mincemeat tart [seriously not joking] and fired up the internet to read the readings for today’s liturgical celebration of the Mass, man, did it feel like someone planning liturgies was carrying that wet blanket I mentioned above with the dog dirt on it!
 
The nerve!
 
The very day after the birth of Jesus as we’re gearing up for good times all around, we’re made to consider rocks coming down on Stephen’s head until he was dead…a poor, faithful disciple of Jesus, full of joy and the the Holy Spirit, speaking boldly about Jesus publicly and really upsetting those who were against Jesus, which included St. Paul (that was before his knock-of-his-horse conversion on the road to Damascus).
 
Sweet baby Jesus on one day, then one ‘sleep’, and we wake up to a bloody head of one of His faithful followers, stoned to death [who exactly hired this ‘liturgical planner’ for the universal Catholic church anyways?].
 
Then – and here’s the “who the heck invited this liturgical genius to the Christmas party” kicker – the Gospel.
 
If you haven’t already read it, this is the place to pause and read it.
 
Yikes!
Why are we presented with a vicious murder and then informed about how following Jesus will lead to us being betrayed by our loved-ones and hated by everyone, carrying our cross, and witnessing to the truth as He did?
Because unless our love of Jesus is such that we are – like St. Stephen – willing to risk all while living in a pagan culture by living authentically, with joyful, unabashed testimony to the truth, then we have no right to call feasting an expression of faith.
 
As we go forward into 2024, a year that will surely prove to be a year like none before for the world, let our feasting strengthen us for the spiritual battle ahead – if that’s where you’re at, I’d say eat as much as you can stomach!
 
If your consumption is for your own pleasure alone and separated from recalling that Jesus may be cute as a button at this time of year, but hanging around Him brings pain and suffering in this world, and if you’re not really ready and willing to stand with St. Stephen on the day after Christmas and take a ‘rock in the head’ for Jesus like him, you’re really thinking that “pleasing is the reason for the season”!
In such case, all your feasting isn’t celebrating anything holy, it’s just gut glorification.