Dwight Longenecker's Blog, page 314

Jesus' Birthday from Scripture

Here's a rather dour Protestant explaining why Jesus was born on December 25 using only the sacred Scriptures. Combine this with my recent article for Crisis magazine and Taylor Marshall's arguments from the date for the angel appearing to Zechariah which you'll find here, and the evidence builds up.



Time to put to rest the old Puritan lie that "Christmas is just the pagan Roman solstice festivals warmed up."

English Christmas

Sometimes on this blog I am, shall we say, somewhat critical of old Blighty, the UK, the sceptered isle, the last remaining truly regal monarchy, the damp land, the old country, that green and pleasant land. England.



Allow me on this eve of Christmas Eve to say that England tops USA for Christmas. Hands down. No debate. No question. Not even a possibility of a question. Here's why:



1. English radio stations do not play nauseating Christmas music like Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the red nosed reindeer chestnuts roasting by the open fire jack frost nipping at your nose city sidewalks etc. etc. from the middle of November non stop for weeks.

2. English churches have Advent Carol services and good music. With decent choirs.

3. Bells ring from church towers mysterious high and free

4. Thanksgiving at the end of November has not knocked the edge off the festive season

5. Turning on the lights at Oxford Street

6. Hamley's toy store in London

7. Once in Royal David's City to begin the Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings.

8. Father Christmas is far more low key and sensible than the larger than life fat elf called Santa Claus who is promoted by the Coca Cola company.

9. People still go house to house Christmas carolling. Really. They do.

10. School nativity plays feature Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. Really. They do.

11. The Christmas pantomime. "Look behind you!"

12. Christmas TV - do they still run the Two Ronnies and Sound of Music?

13. Sherry and mince pies--even if they are dry and stick in your throat.

14. Holly and ivy in the village church

15. The Christmas Cracker

16. The  Queen's Speech

17. Christmas cake. Dark fruit cake with a layer of marzipan topped with hard icing and miniature fir trees and houses and so forth on the top and a red ribbon around it. Honest.

18. Smelly Stilton Cheese and port after Christmas lunch--with those bland 'water biscuits'.

19. Christmas pudding--yes with a sprig of holly and set alight with brandy

20. Far less commercialism and tacky 'Christmas Spirit'

21. Women don't wear Christmas sweaters with embroidered snowmen

22. Brussels Sprouts

23. Wearing paper crowns from the Christmas cracker

24. Bad jokes from the Christmas cracker - "Q: What is green and goes up and down? A: A gooseberry in a lift."

25. The parish Christmas bazaar - where you can get a hand knitted dolly to cover up your loo roll

26. Midnight Mass by candlelight in a medieval church.

27. Presents in a pillowcase

28. In the Bleak Mid Winter by Christina Rossetti

29. It really is the bleak mid winter

30. Christmas Cards with pictures of Jesus Mary and Joseph rather than the people who are sending you the card.

Magnificent or Magnificat?

Having returned to the United States after a twenty five year sojourn in what I call

"the damp lands" of Her Majesty's United Kingdom I have come to love and hate both countries more than ever.



I will leave the UK for another day, but what I love about America is her upbeat, optimistic, 'can-do' mentality. We jump out of bed in the morning ready to march into battle, beat another enemy, cure another disease, make another million dollars or squander another million dollars in some great venture. We can do anything. If there's a problem we can fix it. If it's too hot we'll make it cold. If it's too cold we'll make it hot. We can do anything and we know it. Furthermore, we're not really proud and arrogant about it. We're cheerful. We're practical. We're the ordinary guy next door. We can drink a beer and sit on the porch and be successful and happy without being big headed. We succeed. It's what we do.



I call this the "American Alpha Achievement Culture".  However, like all things, there is a down side. We are so fond of success that we often can't deal with failure. We're so keen on winning that it turns into beating the other guy. We're so pumped by success that we measure it with superficial plastic trophies--plastic siding on our trophy houses in the suburbs, plastic surgery on our trophy wives, plastic ornaments surrounding our trophy desks in our big trophy offices. We surround ourselves with similarly successful people and quietly cut those who don't cut it. It is a neat and tidy, climate controlled, hair combed, teeth straightened, "Yessirree we are wonderful!" jungle where only the fit survive and thrive.



In a word, we are magnificent. We are the best--and I'm always amazed at the ability of many of my fellow Americans to simply ignore or remain blind to all their fellow brothers and sisters who are, let us say, not quite so magnificent. Too often I hear the opinion among wealthy middle class Christians that the poor only have themselves to blame. "If they had worked harder at school or worked harder to get a job they wouldn't need welfare and special health coverage..." or "Why should we pay for them? This is America! The land of opportunity! Let them get a job!" Perhaps they're right. But then perhaps they're wrong.



Perhaps its more complicated than that, and perhaps its more simple than that. Maybe just maybe it wasn't all about being popular and prosperous and pretty and powerful. Maybe we got the whole thing wrong--focussed on the wrong target and then so what if we hit it?



We want to be rich, but the gospel message reminds us over and over again that it is difficult for the rich to get into heaven. Yet, still we Christians work like everybody else to get just as rich as we can. "That bit of the gospel doesn't apply to me!! I can handle it." We hear about the rich man in hell and the poor man in heaven and explain it away. We hear about the final judgment when the poor, the prisoners, the sick and the naked and hungry are equated with Christ and we say with the damned, "But when did we see you naked and hungry and in prison Lord??"



Then at this Christmas season when we focus on the Blessed Virgin and her littleness, and her humility, and her courage and her being fully graced we must listen to the words of the Magnificat and let it question our imaginations of magnificence. Virtually every line is a rebuke to the magnificence of man, and an exaltation of lowliness, poverty, weakness and therefore total dependence on God.



Here it is. Read it again.  Slowly. Lectio Divina if you please...





My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,my spirit rejoices in God my Saviorfor he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:the Almighty has done great things for me,and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear himin every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israelfor he has remembered his promise of mercy,the promise he made to our fathers,to Abraham and his children for ever.
This is the heart of the gospel. If you understand it with your heart you will be prepared for the tenderness of the upcoming celebration of the Nativity of our Lord.

The Hispanic Majority?

Jeff Ziegler writes here on the background and growth of Hispanic Catholicism in the USA. Good article.

Somber News for Christmas

Fraser Nelson writes here about the increasing persecution of Christians in the Middle East. Read it and weep.



In the power vacuum after the recent revolutions, Christians in Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey are all being attacked by Muslim extremists. Nelson observes that the British government are doing virtually nothing to intervene. Is the American government doing anything about it? I doubt it.

Christmas, Pagan Romans and Frodo Baggins

Here is my latest piece for Crisis magazine website. It's all about the proper date for Christmas.

Awesome Music

OK. A few posts ago I did a little rant about awful Catholic music. Why do Anglican and Lutheran converts sigh and moan and grin and bear it? Why do we complain about sentimental ditties, bad folk music, poor hymns and just plain awful crap music at Mass?



Have a little listen to this Christmas carol sung by the choir of King's College Cambridge. The words by Christina Rossetti are sublime and simple and moving and sweet. The music by English composer Harold Darke fits the music perfectly and the combination is, well, out of this world.



So then add to the mix that I was Chaplain to the choir school at Kings College Cambridge for two years. I worked and travelled with the choir, went to Evensong in the chapel daily, celebrated Holy Communion and lived the liturgical year in such a place, and you'll understand why maybe sometimes, just a little bit...one becomes nostalgic.



Especially at Christmas.

Weird Nativity

The Crescat uses a freaky modernistic nativity in the cathedral in LA to inform us about the incarnation and art. She says, "Modern art is often too lazy and it therefore fails to express and inspire; as evidence, I present this nativity scene, the "Haute Sphere." At first glance, and without being told, I would not know what this is."



She's right. Any artwork that needs to be explained is dumb. I remember some modern "liturgical designer" showing me some sort of weird tabernacle he'd made for a church in California. It was like a big metal tree--stark and bare, but above was a dome of green stained glass. "See, that's like the tree of the cross, and above it are the leaves of new life, with light shining through it and that represents the resurrection..." Uh huh. Remember Odgen Nash's little dictum: "Here is a good rule of thumb. Too clever is dumb."



Anyhow. Katrina's article is good. Read it here.

Calling All Anglophiles

Plan to join us at Our Lady of the Rosary on Saturday, January 21 for Now and in England. This will be an excellent day conference with English authors and EWTN personalities Joseph Pearce and Joanna Bogle.



I'll be joining them with a packed program. Deacon Richard Ballard will be emcee and organizer. We are planning a good number of shorter talks covering a whole range of topics. There will be a chance to meet the authors and learn not only about English Catholicism in the past, but what is going on there now with the threat to Christianity by immigration and Islam as well as the positive signs with the Anglican Ordinariate, the result of the recent papal visit and other signs of the 'Second Spring' of the Church in the UK.



The cost of the conference is just $25.00, and this includes lunch. For advance registration be in touch with the parish office--call 864 422 1648. Here's the program as it stands so far:

8:30 - Registration and Refreshments

9:00 - Deacon Ballard - Opening Comments - Why English Catholicism is Important for Americans Today

9:15 - Fr Longenecker - Merry Ole' England - Life in the English Middle Ages

9:45 - Joanna Bogle - Feasts and Seasons - How to Celebrate the Catholic Faith English Style

10:30 - Break

10:45 - Joseph Pearce - The Jolly Prophet - The Importance of G.K.Chesterton Today

11:30 - Fr Longenecker - C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien - Conversion and Catholicism

12:00 - Lunch - Book Signings

12:45 - Holy Rosary Before the Image of Our Lady of Walsingham

1:15 - Joseph Pearce - Searching for Shakespeare - Was Shakespeare Catholic?

2:00 - Break

2:15 - Joanna Bogle - Catholicism in Tension - The Catholic Church in Britain Today

3:00 - Plenary Session - Questions

3:15 - Deacon Ballard - Closing Comments

3:30 - Departure

4:00 - Confessions, Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction

5:15 - Parish Vigil Mass

If you can, please help us publicize this conference by sharing this blog post, networking through Facebook and Twitter.

Christmas at OLR

Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church, 3710 Augusta Road, Greenville, SC, will celebrate the Nativity of Our Lord with three Masses on Christmas Eve. A Children's Mass in English, with the annual Nativity pageant, will be celebrated at 5:15 p.m. A Vigil Mass in Vietnamese will be celebrated at 9:00 p.m. The Midnight Mass in English will begin at 11:00 p.m. with special music by the Foothills Brass Ensemble, guest soloists and the OLR choir. On Christmas Day there will be a Mass in English at 9:00 a.m. and a Mass in Vietnamese at 12

noon. All are welcome to attend, so come home for Christmas!