Keeping Christmas While We Wait
First published Wednesday, July 6, 2016 — Revised Monday, August 17, 2026
Ten years ago, in July of 2016, I wrote what turned out to be my final Reflectionary post of that year. It was an unusual one. Rather than beginning with a Lectionary reading, it grew out of another project that had become important to me: recovering the Twelve Days of Christmas as twelve actual days of celebration, each with its own traditions and possibilities.
The idea was simple. On the sixth day of each month, I would look ahead to the corresponding Day of Christmas. July was the seventh month, so July gave us an opportunity to think about the Seventh Day of Christmas.
I'm a little late revisiting that one this year. It is August already. But perhaps that only reinforces the larger point.
Christmas is worth thinking about all year.
We tend to compress the coming of Christ into a very small portion of the calendar. Sometime after Thanksgiving, the decorations appear, the music begins, the Christmas programs get underway, and suddenly we try to absorb the whole remarkable story at once. Then December 25 arrives and, just when the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas are actually beginning, much of the culture starts taking everything down.
The Christian calendar tells the story differently. Advent teaches us to wait. Christmas teaches us to celebrate. Epiphany sends the news outward. And the Lectionary keeps returning throughout the year to the promises, people and events that prepared the way for the Son of God.
So perhaps there is nothing particularly strange about thinking of Christmas in July—or August.
The Seventh Day of Christmas is traditionally associated, through the familiar carol, with seven swans a-swimming. Over the years, people have suggested Christian meanings for the various gifts in the song, and the seven swans have sometimes been associated with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, fortitude, piety and fear of the Lord.
Whether the song was actually written as a secret Christian catechism is another question. We don't need the legend to be historically true in order to find the exercise worthwhile. Seven gifts. Seven opportunities to ask what kind of person I am becoming.
Do I seek wisdom, or merely information? Do I genuinely try to understand people, particularly those with whom I disagree? Do I listen for good counsel? Am I still willing to learn? Do I have the fortitude to remain faithful when doing so becomes difficult? Is there genuine devotion in my life? And have I retained enough fear of the Lord to remember that God, rather than my own opinions and desires, remains at the center of all of this?
There is another old association with seven that caught my attention ten years ago: the seven sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church—Baptism, Confirmation, Communion, Penance, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and Matrimony.
I'm not Roman Catholic, and Christians disagree about which of these should properly be called sacraments. But perhaps we can get so occupied defending our terminology that we miss what our Catholic brothers and sisters have preserved in placing these things prominently before the Church.
Baptism matters. The deliberate confirmation of faith matters. Communion matters. Confession and repentance matter. Caring for and praying over the sick matters. Setting people apart for ministry matters. Marriage matters.
A Protestant doesn't have to become Catholic to look at that list and ask whether some of these things have become too casual in our own Christian walk. Perhaps traditions different from our own occasionally preserve something that we would do well to look at again.
And then there is the wonderfully ordinary fact that the Seventh Day of Christmas is New Year's Eve.
Celebrate!
There is no reason Christian observance has to make us suspicious of ordinary human joy. Have a wonderful meal. Gather with family or friends. Watch the bowl games. Go to a party. Sing. Laugh. Stay up until midnight if you can still manage it. Thank God for the year that has passed and welcome the year that is coming.
Christmas, after all, begins with exceedingly good news.
So here we are, ten years after I first wrote about the Seventh Month of Christmas, and one month later on the calendar than I intended to be. That's okay. The whole purpose of the exercise is to keep Christmas from becoming trapped in December.
Today we can think about the Seventh Day. Tomorrow, appropriately enough, we'll move into the Eighth Month of Christmas and begin something new.
And this particular Reflectionary carries another little significance for me. As it happened, that July 2016 post was the last Reflectionary I wrote that year. There were other years and many more reflections still to come, but for our Ten Years Gone journey through 2016, this is where the trail ends.
So we'll leave 2016 here, appropriately enough, with Christmas still in the distance and yet already worth anticipating.
Wisdom. Understanding. Counsel. Knowledge. Fortitude. Piety. Fear of the Lord. Baptism and Communion. Repentance and healing. Ministry and marriage. Family and friends. Celebration and anticipation.
There is plenty here to keep us occupied while we wait.
Christmas is coming.
And there is no reason we cannot begin preparing for it now.
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