Silence in the Storm

Martinmas in Germany

Pastor’s Epistle—November, A.D. 2018 B

As a child, I considered November to be a sort of placeholder month: the pause betwixt the more exciting seasons of Halloween and Christmas, with Thanksgiving thrown in as a kind of limp distraction for children impatient for holiday excitement. That my birthday fell near Thanksgiving made things a bit more interesting, but overall it was cold and grey and I was ready to move on to Yuletide cheer.

As an adult, however, I find myself faced with the opposite dilemma. On the Church calendar November is a veritable cornucopia of celebrations, chock-a-block with holidays, commemorations, festivals and feasts. We start off with a bang: All Saints and All Souls, the Days of the Dead for which Halloween stands merely as the opening act. We have St Hubert for the hunters, off to commune with God in the forest wilds. We have Guy Fawkes for the history nuts—always a good excuse to set off some black powder. Then comes Gustavus Adolphus Day, for those poor Swedes unfortunate enough not to be born Norwegian.

By mid-month we reach Martinmas, colloquially known as Veterans Day, when we celebrate not only soldiers but soldiers-turned-peacemakers (amongst whom St Martin was prominent enough to merit having the Armistice ending World War I signed upon his feast day). Soon we come to the commemorations of Sts Columbanus (patron of motorcyclists and protection against werewolves), Clement (celebrated by bar-hopping blacksmiths), and Catherine (a Greco-Egyptian noble with astonishing smarts and self-confidence). C.S. Lewis is in there too, and even if he’s not a canonized saint, he very well ought to be.

Mixed in with all this we have Thanksgiving, a peculiar holiday, sanctioned by the state in a sort of civil religion. Thanksgiving as we know it was a New England tradition later imposed upon the entire country in order to promote unity following the Civil War. It hearkened back, in theory, to our Pilgrim forebears at Plymouth, though in point of fact it really began as a way for Puritans, who did not celebrate Christmas, to celebrate Christmas. I confess that Thanksgiving holds greater interest for me now that our family can officially claim descent from one of the Mayflower’s bad boys: a decidedly unpuritanical fellow named Stephen Hopkins who, amongst other things, ran an illicit pub.

November ends, then, with the Hanging of the Greens, which serves as our introduction to Advent, one of the more quiet and contemplative seasons of the Church year. Here we try to stave off, to the best of our ability, the rush and rumble of the “holiday season” in our stores and in our media, so that December becomes not one interminable pre-Christmas Christmas, but rather a time to still our souls and prepare our hearts for the coming King of Kings.

And then of course there are birthdays, anniversaries, baptisms, and other family festivals. It can all be rather overwhelming if we’re not careful (or even if we are). Thankfully, the overarching themes of November—hearth and home, friends and family, warmth amidst the winter winds—can be quite conducive to things spiritual and sustaining.

So take a breath. Light a candle. Drink something warm by the fire. Let the cares of the world pass away, if only for five minutes, 15, 30 minutes a day. Offer up a thankful prayer, then come to Church and sing. Life is short and often hectic. Let us use the time we have to focus on what is good and true and beautiful. Let us love one another, as Christ has first loved us, so that our November together will be a time of quiet joy and blessed peace in a world still starving for meaning and for silence.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.