“It was quarter past dawn... All the Whos, still a-bed,
All the Whos, still asnooze When he packed up his sled,
Packed it up with their presents! The ribbons! The wrappings! The tags! And the tinsel! The trimmings! The trappings!” — Dr. Suess, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"
When the Grinch set out to steal Christmas, he didn’t just take the presents and the food, but the stockings, the tree, and all the trimmings and trappings. We love the trimmings and trappings of Christmas. A big part of what makes this season so special is all the extraordinary and out-of-the-ordinary stuff. Our lives become different during the Christmas season. We fill our homes with greenery, lights, baubles and decorations that we don’t see any other time of the year. We eat food that we don’t eat any other time of the year. We listen to music and sing songs that we don’t hear any other time of the year.
We love it. It’s our natural inclination to love it. Yes, I know there are some who have a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit – usually because of a past tragedy, a wound that gets reopened every holiday. But if we could roll back the clock to before whatever made the holidays melancholy, we would rediscover a childhood Christmas joy.
We love the trimmings and trappings of Christmas because they are festive. But we love them for more than that. Balloons and birthday cakes are festive, yet they fail to touch something deep in our spirits as do the trimmings and trappings of Christmas.
The trimmings and trappings of Christmas are mysterious. They carry a deep history. They come to us from some forgotten place in the past, rich with hidden meaning. There is something deliciously ancient about holly and mistletoe. There is something almost magical about words like "yule" and "noel" that we don’t hear any other time of the year.
The trimmings and trappings of Christmas are so old we have forgotten their origins. But it is not necessary for us to know what they once meant for them to have real meaning for us now.
It occurs to me that the trimmings and trappings of Catholicism are much the same. Most Catholics I know love the external signs of our faith. We love the bells and the incense. We love the candles and stained glass. We love the chanting. We love our holy water and our rosaries. We love our medals and holy cards. We love the clerical vestments. We love the special blessings, special prayers and special traditions of our faith.
Each time we enter a church to worship, it’s like Christmas. We hear music we don’t hear other times and places. We use words we don’t use any other time or place. There is a sense of history about our traditions – a sense of hidden meaning, a forgotten origin. And like the trimmings and trappings of Christmas, it’s not necessary for us to remember their original meanings to know that they have deep meaning for us.
Every so often I’ll run into a fellow Catholic who finds the trimmings and trappings of our faith distasteful. They don’t like liturgical music. They don’t like beautiful vestments. They poo-poo the special blessings. They think our traditions of the past should be left in the past, scraped off like so many barnacles on the barque of Peter. I cannot help but wonder if they are not somehow wounded. Perhaps, like those who can no longer get into the Christmas spirit, these Catholics who don’t like Catholic things have some misfortune in their past. Whatever it is, I pray that their hearts may be healed so that they might rediscover the great joy of our faith.
Of course, the faith is more than trimmings and trappings. The Grinch couldn’t steal Christmas by taking the stockings, trees, presents and roast beast. Christmas is more than that. At the heart of the celebration is Christ, and as St. Paul reminds us in Romans 8:38, not even angels or demons can take Christ from us, let alone the Grinch.
And so Christ is at the center of our Christian faith. Some would argue that the trimmings and trappings of Catholicism get in the way of worshiping Christ. Hogwash! (Or should I say, “Bah, humbug!”) That’s like saying tinsel and twinkling lights get in the way of celebrating Christmas! The trimmings and trappings (of either Christmas or the Church) celebrate nothing if they don’t celebrate Christ. If sometimes they seem too much, it is only because Christ is too much! Yet He comes to us all the same.
So I will sit by my Christmas tree and enjoy the odd spectacle of a conifer in my house. Its branches, evergreen, remind me of the eternal life made possible through the Incarnation. I will read "The Christmas Carol" and "The Night Before Christmas" aloud to my children. I will pray the “O Antiphons” at Vespers. I will enjoy the twinkling lights, the wreaths, mulled wine and eggnog. I will go to midnight Mass and worship by candlelight. I will sing carols and dream of sugar plums. I will carve the "roast beast" and thank God for the trimmings and trappings of Christmas.
Matthew Newsome is the Catholic campus minister at Western Carolina University and the regional faith formation coordinator for the Smoky Mountain Vicariate.