The day I look forward to the most every holiday season is January 2nd. After the hustle and bustle and sensory overload of the holidays, the second day of the new year arrives like a gentle fall of snow, an invitation to rest in blessed solitude.
Fittingly, it’s also National Introvert Day. Up to half of the American population is an introvert like me, and while the official designation may not be widely known, my sense of relief is undoubtedly widely shared. Many Americans observation report the holiday season is stressful, but also lonely. Agitated, but sad.
The pressure to socialize, consume and celebrate can seem too much. But if you cut back on celebrations and opt for a more subdued vision of the ideal vacation, you risk being seen as a killjoy. The holiday introvert in popular culture is the Grinch, friendly only to his pet dog. In church culture, introverted behavior can be considered self-centered or maybe, less useful for the gospel.
But in a season now marked by excess and decadence, it’s helpful to turn to a calmer, more intentional view of the holidays. As introverted hospitality, introverted feasting can benefit the entire Church. Introverted or not, we can celebrate with more depth and intention if we follow the model of the early church and put “mas” back into “Christmas.”
Today when we hear feast Or vacation, we think of decidedly extroverted enterprises: chatting with family and friends around a table, jostling each other during a shopping trip, singing Christmas carols at strangers’ doors. But the first Christians would have heard these words very differently.
Although early festivals included elements of what we today call “feasting,” the general idea was much more solemn. In pre-Christian times, the Church had a simpler calendar focused on serving the weekly Sabbath. However, “there was a very special Sunday, once a year,” says historian Justo González. writing In The history of Christianity— not Christmas, but “the day of the resurrection, the greatest of Christian holidays”.
Easter was one of the first “official” Christian holidays, celebrated not with materialistic excess but with the rich. symbolism and the sacraments of the Church. On Easter Sunday, the new converts were baptized as members of the congregation in a ceremony full of symbolic and sacramental significance. After baptism, Gonzalez writes, new members were given water, “a sign that they were completely purified.” …And they also gave them milk and honey, as a sign of the Promised Land into which they were now entering.
A feast day in the early Church was therefore above all a day to remember one’s identity as a believer, an identity which went directly against the Roman Empire. For example, the later rise of Christmas as a Christian holiday, some scholars say, came as a counterpoint at Saturnalia, a raucous Roman winter festival celebrated in December. The feast of the Nativity of Christ, on the other hand, was above all a solemn service to worship the Savior.
Contemporary accounts of these first holidays are full of joy and passion. A nun named Egeria who visited an eastern church in 381 described how, throughout Lent, the catechumenes spent three hours a day listening to the bishop explain the Scriptures. “The faithful utter exclamations” she wrote“but when they come to hear him explain catechesis, their exclamations are much louder, God is my witness.”
The special meal of these early Christian holidays was communion. The main “decoration” was the baptismal font – and perhaps a few cobwebs, as some of the early persecuted churches met in the catacombs. Christians did not gather for a series of festivals but for deeply symbolic worship. Believers “stand up together and send prayers,” writes Justin Martyr in his First apology, emphasizing the joy and boldness with which they came into the presence of God to remember the Resurrection. When Christmas was first celebrated, it followed a similar pattern: “mas” refers to mass, as in a church service.
This early church way of celebrating the holy days may especially resonate with those of us who are introverts. We are especially likely to “appreciate the depth of liturgical prayers and hymns, as well as the rich symbolism that fills traditional churches,” as Adam McHugh, author of Introverts in the Church, wrote to CT.
It is also easy for me to see a resemblance between today’s Christmas celebrations and the excess of Greco-Roman holidays. With the gross commercialization of the season, is it no wonder that only half of Americans consider Christmas a religious holiday?
At this point, it is true that there is a danger: some calls to put the “mas” back into “Christmas” have swung the pendulum too far the other way.
The English Puritans in 1645, for example, banned the celebration of Christmas entirely. This only led to a “liturgical void“, as theologian W. David O. Taylor puts it, in which “the government determines the legal form of Christmas, the market shapes a society’s emotional desires and financial expectations regarding the holy day, (and) the family ideal replaces the holy family. .” The Church finally did exactly what it hoped not do: He lost “his distinctive voice in the public square”.
Instead of canceling holiday celebrations altogether, we should therefore think more carefully about how we celebrate. The return to the old model of public holidays as holy days – marked primarily by special religious services – is particularly poignant this year, amid news of the cancelation Christmas festivities in Bethlehem due to the war between Israel and Hamas. Christmas will always come, even without its most superficial celebrations, and tragedy can expose our most superficial concerns and inspire believers to return to worship in the most difficult times.
I’m grateful for new resources, like Advent Devotions and the Jesse Tree, which help us to quietly commit to refocusing these festive days on Christ. These countercultural worship practices bring intentionality – and true joy – back to the season and unite us with Christians in widely varying circumstances around the world.
For my family, the best Christmases have been the ones where we embraced our introversion and returned to the symbolism and simplicity that refreshes us. It’s not the emotionally draining parties that strike us, the rushing to attend this concert or that dinner. These are the four weeks we spent lighting a candle each evening, remembering the Savior to come in the silent darkness. It was Christmas morning where we worshiped in church, sang alongside the global church, and then went for a walk around the neighborhood in the snow.
Introversion is not a free pass to love and serve others during the holidays. It just means we could do things differently. Instead of inviting all neighbors, we could invite the international couple who can’t go home for the holidays. We could return to our Christian roots and restore the original meaning of the word Christmas: Mass on Christ’s Day. We might even find that we look forward not only to January 2, but to all the days leading up to it.
Jesus did not say that he was only present at a party, where there is an exchange of white elephants or where we sing from door to door. He said He would be with only two of us (Matt. 18:20), and He called Himself our true gift (John 3:16). Worshiping, enjoying and resting in Him is more than enough for any Christmas.
Sara Kyoungah White is an editor at Christianity today.
