Often we think Christmas starts with the first carols in tv ads and ends on Christmas night. That may be true in retail. In liturgy it is just plain wrong. Liturgically we anticipate Christmas through the time of Advent - the waiting, the wonder, the anticipation. Christmas begins on . . . Christmas. Then is when the carols are sung, the birth is celebrated and the trees are lit.
I remember my father telling me that he and his siblings came downstairs on Christmas morning to the decorated tree. No tree before that because Christmas hadn't come yet. Well a lot has happened in the last 100 years (wow - that is amazing and as my dad was born in 1905, 1909 would have found him old enough to remember such delight.). Decorations go up even before Thanksgiving now and we have had our tree lit and enjoyed for a while.
Still - deep in the human soul is the recognition that something (the solstice, the birth, the candles) is just a beginning. And so my tree is lit, so are nativity candles and soon I will turn on the carols. It is a blessed time and will continue to be so ~ with Joy
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