TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION
By now, the first Christmas carols are heard in the home, but usually not yet in church. What is a “carol” anyway? Originally, a carol was any kind of communal song sung at a festival such as a harvest. By the thirteenth century or so, carols were associated with household celebrations. “Carol” comes from the Old French carula, meaning a circular dance. Carols weren’t for church, since the language of liturgy was Latin and the carols were in the common language.
Their characteristic sound comes from medieval chord patterns, and they often have strong refrains for everyone to sing. Even in the churches of the Reformation, carols didn’t make it into church services until the 1870s or so, since there was a preference for psalms. Anglicans resisted popular carols; most of our beloved carols came via the Methodists, an offshoot of the Church of England. The Catholic Church generally didn’t admit carols to liturgy either, but we didn’t make laws against them. We are told that the beloved carol “Silent Night” comes from Catholic Austria and a harried parish music director. Joseph Mohr, the priest of St. Nicholas in Oberndorf, had written the words in 1816, but offered them to his music director, Franz Gruber, when the church’s organ broke. Mohr asked him to write a melody that could be played on guitar as a prelude to Mass. Gruber finished the tune just hours before midnight Mass in 1818. The people were shocked to hear a guitar in church, but were charmed by the sweet lullaby. The church was swept away by a flood in the 1990s and the village later relocated, but the townspeople have set up the “Silent Night Memorial Chapel” at the site. Today the carol is in print in some three hundred languages. How wonderful that the pipe organ broke on that night!
– Rev. James Field, Copyright © J. S. Paluch Co.
TRADICIONES DE NUESTRA FE
La tradición mexicana de las Posadas se acompaña de las tradicionales piñatas. Aunque hay piñatas de animales y caricaturas, la piñata original es una estrella con siete picos. La piñata llegó al continente con los misioneros agustinos procedentes de España, mismos que la habían recibido de italianos; y éstos, a su vez, la obtuvieron de Marco Polo quien conoció decoraciones de animales coloridos en China. El asociar la piñata con las Posadas viene de la cultura Náhuatl quienes celebraban a Huitzilopochtli (dios de la guerra) del 17 al 26 de diciembre. Estos ponían cazuelas de barro decoradas con listones y plumas sobre palos en el templo. Al romperlas, tesoros y alhajas caían a los pies de su dios. Los misioneros mezclaron las dos costumbres para la catequesis. La estrella de siete picos representa al diablo y los 7 pecados capitales, mientras que la venda en los ojos es la fe en Cristo. El acto de pegarle a la piñata son nuestros esfuerzos cristianos a pesar de las desorientaciones que trae la vida. Romper la piñata es estar bañado con la gracia del Espíritu Santo y recibir los dones de Dios.
—Fray Gilberto Cavazos-Glz, OFM, Copyright © J. S. Paluch Co., Inc.