Christmas Continues

For Catholic and Orthodox Christians, Christmas starts on the vigil mass of Dec 24th and continues until the feast of Candelmas, the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, 40 days after December 25th. So as the rest of the world pulls down their Christmas decorations and takes down the tree, we are just starting up! Here's a little snippet from GK Chesterton on Christmas:

It is in the old Christmas carols, the carols which date from the Middle Ages, that we find not only what makes Christmas poetic and soothing and stately, but first and foremost what makes Christmas exciting. The exciting quality of Christmas rests, as do all the other examples I have mentioned, on an ancient and admitted paradox. It rests upon the great paradox that the power and centre of the whole universe may be found in some seemingly small matter that the stars in their courses may move like a moving wheel round the neglected outhouse of an inn. And it is extraordinary to notice how completely this feeling of the paradox of the manger was lost by the brilliant and ingenious theologians, and how completely it was kept in the Christmas carols. They, at least, never forgot that the main business of the story they had to tell was that the absolute once ruled the universe from a cattle stall.