(LifeSiteNews) – The word “holidays” comes from “Holy Day,” which is a Catholic phrase. I love holidays because they enrich and bring life and joy to a nation. For a time, we are able to forget that we are in a war, elections were stolen, inflation is the highest it’s been in 40 years, and we face a rise in crime, porn, drugs, alcohol, and suicide. Holidays temporarily overshadow these societal ills. Every holiday that makes America great comes from Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
We celebrate holidays like:
- Christmas (the birth of Christ)
- New Years (is dated from the birth of Christ)
- Easter (the resurrection of Christ)
- Valentine’s Day (the martyrdom of St. Valentine for preaching the love of Christ)
- Patrick’s Day (a Bishop exorcist who drove out the occult from Ireland for Christ)
- Halloween (All Hallows Eve, the day before All Saints Day. On All Saints Day we celebrate those who are now with Christ and on All Souls Day, those who are being purified and will soon be with Christ)
- Veterans Day – we honor our Veterans of war, especially those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country. This was inspired by Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who paid the ultimate price for the sins of the world on a cross (cf. John 15:13 – “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”). American military cemeteries are adorned with crosses on Veterans Day.
Everything that is worth celebrating in America comes from JESUS, not Buddha, Confucious, or Mohammed.
As Catholics and Americans, we celebrate these Christ-inspired holidays in order to renew our joy by remembering events of the past and calling them to mind and making them metaphysically present through ritual. The Christmas season and these other holidays listed above bring joy even to non-believers.
Catholics celebrate as families and we celebrate liturgically as a Church through ritual.
Jews celebrate the Passover with rituals; the Passover prefigures Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. Ritual has the power to help the memory preserve what is truly important. Ritual reminds us who we are and allows us to pass it from generation to generation. If you want to keep any memory alive, it has to be attached to ritual, because rituals help us keep our Christian morals and values.
How did the Jews remain alive without a country from 70 A.D. to 1948 A.D.? It was their “memory” of the past that kept them alive. How do you keep your memory alive? Through ritual. This is how the Jews recalled all their sacred events; through ritual, Catholics do likewise.
The repetition and ritual celebration are how holidays become burned in our soul and give us a deeper awareness and appreciation of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith grows when it is well expressed in celebration. Good celebrations foster and nourish faith. Poor celebrations weaken and destroy faith. G.K. Chesterton said: “rituals are simple ways of expressing complex ideas.”
All of life from sunrise to sunset is ritual.
I hope you have a happy holy Christmas Eve “as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).
With each passing year it seems I develop an even greater understanding of my brokenness and therefore my desperate need for the Christ Child. What a gift HE is! HE is everything! My prayer is that you are overwhelmed to tears this season contemplating this gift. May HIS life within you bring you greater healing, freedom, and holiness!
Mary Christ Mass,
Jesse Romero