Fr. Herman’s Choral Advent Calendar to Return
That's right, folks; the Nativity Fast is coming, and you know what that means.
In the Byzantine Rite, the liturgical tradition to which I’ve belonged since 1999, we’re soon to begin the Nativity Fast (known also as the St. Philip’s Fast, since it begins the day after the feast of the Apostle Philip on Nov. 14). This is a forty-day season of preparation for Christmas, normatively involving abstinence from meat and dairy products. People debate whether or not this fast has enough in common with the Roman Rite’s season of Advent to be called by the same name. Over the years, I’ve generally referred to it as the Nativity Fast, since that’s what I was taught as a young catechumen in the OCA. On the other hand, I cherish finding common ground and common names for similar things across different liturgical traditions. And when it comes to making a choral selection for each day of the fast, well, “Choral Advent Calendar” has more of a ring to it than “Choral Nativity Fast Calendar.” So there we are.
The one name I cannot countenance for this fast is “Nativity Lent” or “Christmas Lent,” or anything involving the word “lent.” Lent is the old Anglo-Saxon word for Spring, and thus only the Great Fast, the fast preparatory to Easter, can properly be called Lent (and shouldn’t be called “Great Lent,” since there’s only one Lent). All other fasts are fasts, not lents. (I’m looking at you, Exodus 90, with your “St. Michael’s Lent” that inexcusably begins on a great feast day.)
But I digress.
Starting on Friday, then, I’ll be endeavoring with God’s help to post here every day of the Fast, and likely every day up through the Feast of the Theophany (aka Epiphany) on January 6th. (There may even be an encore on Candlemas Eve and Day.) Each day’s post will consist of a carefully selected recording of a piece of choral music, linked to in both Spotify and Youtube, with the text (“lyrics”), author, and composer, and a brief commentary. As I wrote in 2015, the first time I did this:
I’ve based the name for the page on the delightful old German Advent calendars where each day leading up to Christmas you open a little door that reveals a holy image or a scripture verse or the like. My page is the same idea, but each day it’s a link to a piece of choral music. And with each day’s post, I include a description or commentary, and the text of the piece. My hope is that people will take this fast as an opportunity to listen to music attentively – i.e., will learn something about a piece before listening, and will listen to it with their undivided attention, while not doing anything else, and while reading along with the text.
Even though my posts will correspond to the liturgical calendar of the Byzantine Rite, the lion’s share of selections is likely to come from the English choral tradition, both because that’s an area of choral music I’m very familiar with and also because it’s a tradition that has produced a singular wealth of compositions for the Advent and Christmas seasons, vast in number and deep in substance.
When I undertook a choral Advent calendar in 2015, I was interviewed by the Orthodox Arts Journal about that project, but more generally about the important place of Advent and Christmas carols in Western culture and among Eastern Christians who live in the West. I commend the interview to my readers as a way to understand why I think this project is important and worthy of the effort I’ll put into it and of the attention its followers may give it. Here’s an excerpt:
I prefer to look at the presence of carols in stores and malls as one of the last vestiges of Christianity in the public space here in America, and I think we should value this and build on it. Yes, the carols are sometimes cheap and often annoying, but it’s not all “Jingle Bell Rock”! I’m always delighted when I go into a department store in 2015 and hear songs about Christ’s virgin birth! Even if, as is usually the case, I don’t like the musical arrangements, I’m still so happy to hear them. Some Christians complain when they start hearing carols and seeing Christmas decorations long before Christmas. Okay, maybe this is not ideal, but, you know, really I’d prefer to go into a store on November 1st and hear a song about Our Savior – or even Rudolph! – than a song about licentiousness, which is what we’re treated to the rest of the year.
Young adults today will probably be the last generation to have grown up somewhat familiar with a basic repertoire of a dozen or so famous carols: “The first Nowell,” “Hark, the herald-angels sing,” “Silent night,” “O come, all ye faithful,” “O come, O come, Emmanuel,” and the like. For many people, memories of early childhood Christmases are some of the purest and happiest of their lives, even if mixed with avarice or bitterness surrounding gifts, and those memories are bound up with carols like these. This means that for the next fifty years or so, these carols will have the potential to connect to a very special part of people’s lives. Our task as Orthodox Christians in a society increasingly post-Christian, but still having these vestiges of Christian memory, is to elevate these carols, to help them be a window through which people can experience something beautiful, something peaceful, and have even just a glimmer of joy and gratitude. This is especially our job if we are musicians. We should organize concerts with carols, and go caroling in our neighborhoods or at local hospitals and nursing homes. Let’s not let the devil have Christmas. It doesn’t belong to him.
Despite the emphasis I put here on well-known carols, many (most?) of my selections in the Advent calendar will be less known, even, perhaps, obscure—but equally worthy of attention.
For those of you who followed the Advent Calendar almost a decade ago, fair warning that most of this year’s selections will be the same as those. Ain’t nobody got time to make a whole new one every nine years!
If you want to receive the posts every day via email, then you can subscribe to my Substack for free! May the Lord bless you, and may Our Lady, St. Philip, St. Andrew, St. Nicholas, and all the holy Prophets and all the Ancestors of Christ guide your footsteps as you prepare for Christmas!