Know Tea

I ended my first on this topic with this thought:

This is the shape of the Church Calendar that has been in place since the Fourth Century.  It not only predates the Reformation of the 16th Century, but it even predates the Great Schism (between East and West) of 1054 by almost 600 years!  So this ordering of time, the rhythm of the Christian Year, properly belongs to all Christians.  It is the heritage of the unified Church:  it is not a “Roman Catholic thing” versus a “Protestant thing,” or even a “Western thing” versus an “Eastern thing.” It is our common heritage, a part of our common life as Christians.

So, if the Church Year is not just a Roman Catholic thing or even just a Western thing, if it’s our common heritage as Christians, dating back to the Fourth Century AD, what happened?  Why do most Evangelical Protestants have little or no experience whatsoever with the Church Year?  Why are most Protestants in America, at most, “CEOs” (Christmas and Easter only)?  Why do most Evangelicals, when hearing someone mention Advent or Lent, for example, say “isn’t that something the Catholics do?”  How, and when, did we toss aside one of the most ancient and, arguably, spiritually beneficial elements of Christian tradition?

The short answer:  ignorance of history happened.

It happened shortly after the Reformation, for starters.  Don’t blame the Reformers, though.  The Reformers were true radicals according to the true meaning of the word (from the Latin radica or root): they wanted to get to the roots of Christianity.  In their liturgical reforms, the Reformers took their cue from the ancient church.  They weren’t trying to blow everything up and start from scratch, but rather to get back to the practices of the ancient church, and those practices included the Church Year.  Yes, even Calvin.  He was not a fan of the sanctorial calendar (saints’ days), but he was in favor of the great Evanglical Feasts:  that is, the feast days that celebrate the great events of the Gospel story, which is nothing other than the Christian Year as we have outlined it in these articles.  The Second Helvetic Confession says,“If in Christian liberty the churches religiously celebrate the memory of the Lord’s Nativity [Christmas], Circumcision [The Eighth Day of Christmas, a.k.a. Holy Name of Jesus], Passion [Good Friday], Resurrection [Easter], and of his Ascension into heaven [The Fortieth Day of Easter, a.k.a. Ascension Day], and the sending of the Holy Spirit upon his disciples [Pentecost], we approve of it highly” (emphasis added).

The Reformers knew that the rhythm of these “great evangelical feasts” was a heritage of the early church, and they treated it as such.  Unfortunately, many of their followers, especially in later generations, were not the students of history that the Reformers were.  Ignorant of this common history of the whole church, many Protestants removed from their churches anything that, to them, smacked of “Romanism,” including the Church Year.  Some of the Puritans, in fact, objected even to saying the Lord’s Prayer because the “Papists” said it too.

Most American Evangelicals today trace their lineage to those groups who jettisoned the Church Year back in the 17th Century for being too “Romish.” Christmas, for example, was decidedly just a “Catholic thing” in the early days of the United States.  It was not an official holiday in any of the States until Alabama declared it to be so in 1836.  Other States followed suit, but it was by no means unanimous.  Oklahoma, for example, did not make Christmas an official holiday until 1907.  Even after Christmas was a holiday in most of the States, most Protestants didn’t do much with it, still considering it to be a “Catholic thing.” Slowly, they began to celebrate it more, but not because they studied their history and got in touch with their Christian roots.  Instead, they began to make more of Christmas as retailers began to make more of Christmas.  The growth of Christmas as a holiday among American Protestants (with the exception of the Anglicans and Lutherans, who had never stopped celebrating Christmas or any of the other feasts of the Church Year) coincided with the growth of the commercialism of Christmas.

American Protestants owe far more to Macy’s than to church history when it comes to Christmas.  In 1862, Macy’s was the first store to have a Santa Claus for children to visit.  In 1870, Macy’s was the first store to stay open until midnight on Christmas Eve.  In 1924, Macy’s staged its first-ever Thanksgiving Day Parade, which is actually a Christmas parade, introducing the idea that the day after Thanksgiving begins the “Christmas shopping season.” Macy’s, not church history, planted that idea in the heads of American Protestants, and it has taken root in a big way.

After Vatican II (1962-65), many Protestants began to investigate the common history they share with the universal church, and a liturgical renewal movement began in earnest.  Among Presbyterians, the first major result of this renewal was The Worshipbook (1970), which helped reintroduce the beauty of the Church Year to many.  The Book of Common Worship (1993) is a further development of this movement.  Through the liturgical renewal movement, more and more Protestants have discovered how the Christian church has celebrated Christmas and other holy days throughout history, enjoying being a part of a tradition that is much deeper, much broader, and much more meaningful than they ever imagined.

As we begin a new Church Year soon (on November 29 to be exact), I hope that many of you will decide to reconnect to this rich history yourselves.  I’m working on some new resources for the upcoming Church Year to encourage you in thie rediscovery, so watch this space.