It's still Christmas, folks

A priest-friend of mine recently wrote an post at Pray the Mass on the continuing celebration of Christmas.  It is a timely reminder of our Catholic faith and culture.

Here's a bit of it:

I am often struck at the impatience with which some folks end their celebration of Christmas. Today, I walked into the local hospital, when I commented that the registration area looked like it had been remodeled, the admitting nurse looked at me with a blank face and replied, “oh, yeah, they took down all the Christmas stuff!” The reader should note that the Christmas “stuff” had been up since around Thanksgiving – coinciding with what we, in North America, have come to experience as “the Holiday Season.” Not five minutes later I was in the chaplain’s office reviewing the Catholic census when one of the hospital staff chaplains asked, “Father, did you have a nice Christmas?” My cheerful response was, “Yes, and I am still having it, I celebrate Christmas for at least eight days!” “Oh,” he said, “taking a page from the Jewish playbook?!” I stopped for a moment to think about it, and said, “something like that.” I had parishioners to visit and didn’t have time to talk to him about the concept of an “Octave”, but his comment set me to thinking about the origin of this ancient Christian practice of observing certain solemnities as “Octaves.”

Read the rest.