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If I may be allowed a moment of immodesty, I used to throw the BEST Christmas parties. It all started when I moved into a house seven years ago; I had been living in an apartment for the past few years and if you know anything about apartments, they tend not to be the most conducive spaces for hosting. But when I found myself living in a three-bedroom row house in Baltimore, the party bug hit me in a big way and I started throwing my doors open for all sorts of occasions. At that time most of my friends were in their late-twenties/early thirties and single so the parties always contained an unspoken spirit of celebration for the waning moments of the collective uncommitted nature of our lives.

As Christmas time approach, I decided to have a yuletide celebration. Ideally I was hoping to have it in the middle of December, just before everyone heads off for vacation but while people are still around. It turned out that I was not alone and that particular time was indeed a popular evening to throw a Christmas party, so I decided to grab the first Saturday of December. It felt a bit early, but at least most people would be around.

It turned out to be the perfect weekend to throw a Christmas party; not only were most people available, it was so early into the season that people were in a very festive mood. Everyone’s metal health had not yet been shredded by the constant onslaught of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas” played on repeat for thirty days at that point, so the kegs and the dancing lasted until well after four in the morning. So the first weekend of December became the tradition for my holiday blowout for the next few years.

I have to confess, while sitting in the pews during my time on the other side of the ontological divide I would get kind of annoyed when the priest kept on insisting that we were not to be celebrating Christmas before December 25. I would simply add that to the expanding list examples that demonstrated why the Catholic Church was out of touch with everyday living. I mean, the people at Macy’s keep telling me differently and ever since the real Santa Claus chose that department store over Gimbel’s, I don’t know whom to trust on the issue.

And I can tell you, this divide only gets worse in seminary; during a prayer service in December last year, I played an instrumental mediation music that included a soft piano recording of “Joy of Man’s Desiring;” you would have thought that I played an Ozzy Osborne record backwards.

Still as my Winter Break comes to a close, I have to confess that, even despite the elevation of my spiritual being over the past few years (har har har), my own December has been a lot more about the North Pole than it has been Bethlehem… and I too find myself grateful that the constant rotation of Bing Crosby, holiday sales, and butter cookies has been put away for another year.

While reading over my breviary, I noticed something… something which I always known but always manages to escape my conscious as I’m returning unwanted presents and packing up the tree, is that the Christian Christmas Season begins just as Wal Mart’s Christmas season closes. Space to bring in the “Reason for the Season” opens up in my life after a four-week period in which making room for stillness and prayer requires an act of courage similar to those at Tienanmen Square.

For better or for worse, I have always been a person who is prone to excess. It’s not that next December I am promising to be any better about putting the proper focus onto the Advent Season… at that point, I will have been waiting eleven long months to crank up the A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector and Barenaked Ladies’ version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” but at least I will be reminded that when the insanity ends, God will be waiting to meet us… as He did two-thousand years ago. In this instance, having a Christmas Season that lasts three weeks beyond December 25 makes me glad that the Church seems a bit out of touch with the world around it.