When Should A Catholic Decorate For Christmas?

Image Credit:- Image is authors own and is taken from her personal library.

Decorating your home can be something of a thorny subject, with many people decorating well in advance of the liturgical calendar in today's day and age... yet, there are some Catholics who maintain that the liturgical calendar is the only way to go, which means that Christmas begins at sunset on Christmas Eve for them.

The simple answer is that it is a matter of personal choice when you choose to decorate your home for Christmas - however, I feel that it's important to consider the reason why you are choosing to decorate your home when you do.

I have to admit that I had initially planned to simply talk about my own thoughts and feelings about Advent and Christmas when I initially began to write this post... however, I found this video that I feel expresses Advent so much better than I could, while still doing it justice, So I'll insert that here and let you watch it for yourself.

As far as Christmas preparations go, both Advent and Christmas are equally as important as each other because there are things that we need to do in advance of attending Midnight Mass on Christmas Day, like receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation , for example. Then, there's the two weeks of fasting for the beginning of December. And preparing the way for the Lord to enter in.

Making space for all the new things to come into our lives can be something of a chore as we are required to cast out the old things that no longer serve us, but it also gives us a chance to remember the less fortunate at Christmas, too, be it by donating old items that are no longer of use to us, donating our time to the less fortunate or by clothing the homeless. It's important to remember that Jesus lay in a manger in a stable, so we must never get too complacent in our lives.

While I speak about the homeless, please also spare a few moments to help those who might be in emergency accommodation over the colder months. These homeless people are harder to spot than the rough sleepers that we see a lot more of, but they have it just as rough since they can spend 12 or more hours of their day just wandering aimlessly from place to place, too poor to afford a hot drink to take away the chill from their bodies. These people are considered to be "too vulnerable" to have to sleep on the streets, but their reality is often little better than those who do have to sleep on the streets.

Anyone who chooses to put up their Christmas Tree before Christmas Eve isn't sinning in any way and nor are they somehow "less Catholic than thou". After all, they are still preparing for the birth of Jesus in their own way. They could be too pressed for time that they fear being able to get everything done in time for Midnight Mass on Christmas Day, or maybe the act of putting up the Christmas decorations has become an Advent tradition of itself for them.

In the ideal world, I think that I would have my nativity set out starting from December 1st (obviously, I would place baby Jesus at the appropriate time) as a visual reminder of Christmas and what it is that I am preparing for, since I tend to shy away from things like Advent Calendars and Advent Candles since my time as a homeless person. I feel that these things have largely become too commercialized for my liking these days.

Some of my American Catholic Vloggers have also spoken about the Jesse Tree, which is a new concept for me. I feel that this could be something that I could possibly work through next Christmas, however, I would like to spend a little more time researching about it myself before I pass further comment on the tradition or decide one way or the other if this is right for me.

Oppression Still Exists in 2018

One thing that I've been talking a lot about since October of 2017 is the unfairness of the British Government's Universal Credit system. However, I never thought that I would be able to cross it over into the Catholic realm because I wasn't able to see it as the oppression that it is until very recently.

The more I think back over the past 10 years or so, the more I see about how whole areas of our country were divided and stigmatized, which paved the way very nicely for the huge reforms of the welfare system that were to come. It all started by making out that those on state benefits were living the high life with all the modern luxuries - yet, it didn't show exactly how they were able to afford such nice things while they were on a low income. Had they taken the time to look into that, they would have seen the truth of the situation in all it's glory. A lot of those large screen TV's were bought on a pay weekly scheme that saw the purchaser paying double the value of the item in order to be able to say that they owned it.

From that access point, it was pretty easy to divide the working classes away from the poorest classes who are the disabled and unemployed by picking out a few prime examples from the select small group who seemed to be doing better than everyone else on welfare because of their large family and blast stories about them on the front page of every newspaper, knowing well that the general public wouldn't have any way or inclination to fact check the truth of these stories for themselves.

By the time phase two was complete, there were only the disabled left to go at... and these were always going to be one of the easiest groups to separate from the favor of the working classes because of the minority that fraudulently claim to have disabilities when they either don't or aren't affected as badly as they claim to be... in fact, I'm surprised that this wasn't the first group of people to be targeted by the hate campaign.

Ever since Universal Credit came into effect, it's become a case of presuming that everyone is trying to scam the system until they are able to gather enough information to prove that this is not the case at all. Usually, this information has to come in the form of doctor's letters and letters from consultants, which are not written for free and typically see the disabled person having to pay to obtain a copy to show to their work coach because the Department for Work and Pensions can't demand access to patient records because of the uproar that it would cause among the general population if they were to find out that Patient Confidentiality is now a thing of the past.

Instead, they are forcing sick and disabled people to sit opposite a stranger in a public room and recount over and over again the stories behind their recent doctor's appointments so that they can cherry pick whatever details they feel are important enough to pass on up the chain of command. At the same time, they find no problem in disregarding the advice of a qualified medical professional who has obtained the degrees required to have a medical opinion on if their patient is fit and able to work or not, so they force the sick and disabled to place themselves in situations that they don't feel confident in their abilities to do by forcing them into work or voluntary roles that could potentially endanger their safety or the safety of those who they have to work with.

For now, there is no outcry about this because it is only the sick and disabled who are having to live with the effects of it. However, it's not going to stop here. As they reach the bottom of the pool of sick and disabled to persecute, guess where they'll be looking next? That's right, they will turn to the lowest earners who are in receipt of working tax credits and they will be made to find more hours of work. Of course, many of the sick and disabled will be caught up in this again because of the fact that they may not have worked for many years and have had no training - so they'll still be at the bottom of the totem pole of employment.

I can't help but wonder how long it's going to take before someone else sees what I see and starts to speak out for these people - for us? We already have people out here dying - dying because they can't live with another moment of oppression, dying because Universal Credit made them homeless and it's cold on the streets tonight, dying because they have no home and you need an address and access to the Internet to claim Universal Credit.

If we don't speak out for God's people and reach out to the oppressed in this, their hour of need, then who else will hear their cries?

Of course, you can bury your head in the sand and you don't have to take my word for exactly how bad things are getting for people who are living with the oppression that we are facing right now - but I am not the only one who is trying to speak out with the truth as things stand today.

This one is a longer view, but it highlights the gravity of some of the issues faced in a much better way than I can describe.

Do Pro Life Rallies Go Too Far?

It's not uncommon to see Catholics protesting against abortion outside abortion clinics. I've seen many a news clip featuring hordes of men and women all screaming and shouting for their cause... and they aren't necessarily all pro life.

Though slightly off topic here, I've developed a somewhat dim view of all rallies pro anything and that's not because I don't agree with the goal that they are trying to achieve. Naturally, there are some rallies that I don't agree with and some that I do. The reason that I decline to place my support behind any rally these days is because we've forgotten how to protest in a way that doesn't come across as a baying mob and terrifying everyone in a seven block radius. The public deserves to be able to go about their daily lives without feeling fearful to simply walk by any protest site.

I admit that some of my dim view comes from seeing the far left group Britain First protesting against the Muslim community - but I've also seen behavior that would cause me issues happen in a wide range of protests ranging from pro life through to employment issues.

The way that I see it is:- If this bothers me in the way that it does, what effect would it have on others who have autism and other conditions that require their environment to be strictly controlled in order to remain healthy? Rallies don't necessarily have to be audible to have an impact... and nor do they need to have law enforcement breaking apart scuffles between parties who have differing views from each other.

In a lot of ways, I feel that this video just about sums up my thoughts on pro life rallies:-

Get Into A Good Routine On Mass Days

One thing that really helped me to settle into the Catholic faith was establishing a Mass Day routine that I put into action on the days that I am to attend church. In this post, I'll be looking at what your routine could be.

Fasting

Part of my routine before Mass is fasting. I know that the official word says that you only need to fast for an hour to be able to go and receive... but an hour doesn't seem long enough for me - so I usually try to fast for the entire day prior to receiving the Eucharist. With that said, I have fasted for shorter periods when it hasn't been healthy for me to hold to that routine because I need to eat with medication or I've felt faint for example. The point isn't in seeing how long I can fast for, in my eyes, it's more about sharing in Jesus' suffering for me.

Bathing

Bathing is also a part of my preparation routine because I like to be clean on the outside before I go to be cleansed on the inside. It also reduces the chances of being refused to receive in the hand if you are freshly bathed. I'll take this time to reflect on my baptism ceremony and the way that God chose me for His own.

On a side note, ladies, timing is important for this one! Don't wait until right before Mass if you want to dry and style your hair after you have bathed. I know that I've had to go to church with my hair unstraightened or a little damper than I might have liked it to be because I didn't have enough time to finish my look and there have been times when I've risked hypothermia doing just that in the winter months.

Clear Your Mind

This step presented itself to me at a point when I was in a depression and I incorporated it into my routine when I saw how beneficial it was to me. The first thing I did was gather together a bunch of hymns that lingered in my mind after Mass. I would call it my "favorite hymn list" - but some of them, I'd never heard before that night and they were in my brain, so that doesn't seem accurate.

Once I had a short list of three or four of these hymns, I would listen to them on the days that I'd be attending church and I found it had the effect of calming my mind ready to focus it on the Holy Trinity when I arrived at church.

As far as my list goes, it's nothing special, just a bunch of hymns that I gathered together on YouTube. My selection process isn't that great either - I'd simply listen to various versions of the same hymn until I found the one that resonated and I would add that one to my list. As a result, I had a "random" mismatch of hymns that I happen to like listening to.

Reflect On The Readings

Once you have a clear mind, you can take the step of reading and reflecting on the meaning of the readings that will be read in Mass.

I've found that this could be beneficial if there is a chance that your preacher could use a shortened version of the Gospel because you have the chance to read the backstory or read on a little further in your Bible if you feel that you need a little extra context than is presented in the shortened version.

Though our pastor tends not to do that as much since my group at RCIA class bombarded him with requests for a little more context than was contained in the shortened version, it's still nice to have a little personal quiet reflection time before I go and see if the pastor has picked up on any of my thoughts in his homily.

Give Yourself Time To Arrive

We've all had them... those Masses where we've had to dash to church like Satan himself was chasing us down the road. The thing is that those hurried arrivals certainly aren't beneficial to us and they certainly don't help you to feel calm and collected.

Once you've been to Mass a few times, you'll have a routine of the things that you like to do in your mind. Typically, I like to say my prayers, read the announcements in my bulletin and mark out the hymns that we'll be singing during this service before Mass starts - that way, I only need to knock my page marker down after each hymn that we sing. Because of that, I like to try and arrive at least half an hour before Mass begins and spend whatever extra time remaining gazing at Jesus in the tabernacle.

At Christmas and Easter, you might want to give yourself even longer to arrive to church - especially if you need a place to sit because the pews fill up fast... and if you spot a guy at the front, signaling like crazy before Mass has begun, investigate further because he could be indicating to you where there is pew space! A lesson that I learned as I attempted to free up standing room towards the middle of my church.

Finding my Faith

As far as my faith goes, I spent much of the first nine years of my life attending my local baptist church with two of my aunts. For the most part, I enjoyed attending church and learning about Jesus' life. Some of the activities and clubs also helped me to increase my faith... maybe a little too much for a child as young as I was.

I'd be sitting there listening to the sermons that they were preaching and I'd get questions in my mind. I couldn't research all these questions by myself because I didn't have the knowledge or understanding as a child. One day, I asked my mum a question about my faith that she couldn't answer as an atheist - so she did the only thing that she felt would help me and guided me towards her sister-in-law who should have been able to have helped me. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to help me in a way that stopped my young mind from working in circles and she ended up getting frustrated and accusing me of doubting the word of God.

For me, that was the pivotal moment that began my twenty odd year hiatus from the church. I was just nine years old. During my teenage years, I found that I missed the youth groups that the church offered, but there was no way that I dared to return when I couldn't try to make sense of the Bible without being accused of questioning God's word.

After I left the church, I quickly became spiritual and spent the twenty years seriously involved in things like witchcraft, tarot and empathy. Though this sort of thing doesn't fly well in the Catholic faith, it served me well at the time because it kept me aware of the fact that there were beings higher than me... though, at the time, I wouldn't necessarily have accepted God in my life exactly as He is.

With that said, I accept that God never really gave up on trying to call me back to His church. During my teenage years, a few things happened to me that I still can't fully explain to this day. I became interested in a Christian duet group that would put on shows at what I would later find out was my local Assemblies of God church or the local sports centre.

These events weren't necessarily the safest things for me because I am asthmatic and often found that their heavy use of dry ice during the shows would affect my asthma before the night was over. It was at this time that my first "random unexplained event" happened. I was at a show that the Christian group were preforming at the sports centre when my asthma struck. Because of the layout of the building, I was able to remove myself to a (closed) bar area upstairs, where I was still at least able to see the group - even if I wasn't able to actually hear them singing anymore. Unbeknown to me, there was a group of Christians up here having some sort of meeting. One of them came over and engaged me in conversation and I got to explaining that I came to see the group downstairs and that I was sick.

She asked me if she could pray for me and I hesitated for a moment, remembering why I left the church and became spiritual in the first place. In the end, my logical mind reasoned that prayers were about all that I had at this point in time since my medicine was a mile away at home and I still had at least another hour before mum came to picked me up - so I agreed to allow her to pray for me. She returned to her group and explained to the others about my problem. I soon found myself surrounded by this group of people to the point where I started to feel claustrophobic. They all reached out their hands towards me and began to pray. I don't recall much of the prayer itself because I was too focused on a strange warmth that I felt and a golden aura that I could see around me. They left soon after that prayer and I never got the chance to tell them that their prayer took me from the point where I was seriously considering going to reception and asking them to call an ambulance to take me to hospital to being able to go back downstairs and enjoy the last half an hour of the event that I went there to see.

Both times I saw this group, I felt the call to return to the church... though I didn't feel like this was the church that I belonged to. The more I thought about it, the more I kept recalling a weird event/dream that happened before I joined the Baptist church as a child. I had a dream in which I saw a particular church in my locality. The fair was in town, so it had to be autumn in my dream. We were returning home from visiting family members on my mum's side of the family and the route would have taken us past the Catholic church - though I was too young to understand that the church was Catholic... to my young mind, all churches were basically one and the same.

The church was in darkness, though I could see candlelight shining through the bottom half of the stained glass by the front of the church as we passed by. It was to take me twenty years to even set foot in that church to at least begin to try to make sense of that event - but, once I did, it became clear to me almost instantly that there's no way that what the child me saw could have been a candle or even a collection of candles because 1) there were no Masses celebrated in darkness at that time of year and 2) the light was coming from the place where the tabernacle was - the window is too high for any light pollution from candles lit inside to escape into the outside world and illuminate the glass as brightly as that. No matter how much I've sat and thought about it, I've never been able to come up with a plausible explanation for how that window came to be lit quite like it was that night - or even if it was a dream or a reality.

In the days leading up to my first Mass, I've never really done well with men in general and I have a deep distrust of strange men, then I had to enter a church that was led by a strange man by myself, that was a terrifying thought. This was after the Catholic abuse scandal had blown up the media - so, from the outside, it probably would have presented itself in a way that might have implied to someone that I sort of expected to be abused as soon as I stepped over the threshold.

When I did finally set foot in the Catholic church for the first time (it was the exact church that I saw in the event that I described above), I felt like I had finally found the place where I belonged. I wasn't scared or nervous... I just felt strangely calm and at ease, though I did mess up a few things during that first Mass (and a few after that).

One of the hymns that I sang that first Mass was Colours Of Day. I vaguely remembered it as one of my favourite hymns from the Baptist church of old and I saw it as one of several signs that I was given that night. I have added it below for those of you who might want to listen to the song for reference There is one sign that I received that night that I won't be talking about here in this post because of the deeply personal nature of it. Only a handful of people know about that sign and I intend to keep it that way out of respect to other people who were involved in it.



Attending RCIA class in preparation for my baptism just reinforced my belief that I had found the right church for me - though I was often too afraid to speak and preferred to listen quietly as I fiddled with the beads of my rosary (my rosary is a huge source of comfort and reassurance for me). I had finally found a place where I could ponder on the Bible and ask for guidance without being made to feel like I was doing something that I shouldn't be doing. In fact, it was something that we were actively encouraged to do as part of our RCIA class.

Even at this late stage, I was given opportunities to step out of the church and return back to the discerning phase of trying to find the right faith for me... but I didn't falter in my path because I knew that I was on the correct path - though I was very much afraid of the unknown. I would obsessively search the Internet looking for clues on what to expect. I soon found that every Catholic I spoke to was hugely secretive, preferring to leave my interpretations of these Masses untainted by others' interpretations of them... little did they know that I was asking more about what to expect rather than interpretation help at the time. Had I walked into my baptism, not knowing that the lights went out and there was a fire lit at the back of church, I would have freaked right out. It was scary enough for me as it was and I'd been warned to expect these things as it was.

Almost a year later, I'm still happy with my decision and glad that I joined the Catholic church. Over the course of the past year, I've been growing into my new faith and as a result of that, I'm becoming more aware of the ways that God is working in my life and using me as a tool to reach out to others.