SOUL FOOD:

If it weren’t for the Christian Holy Day known as the Holy Theophany in Eastern Christendom and as Epiphany in the West, I’d just as soon skip this week of the year. I find myself working hard to keep my spirits from tanking as I watch Christmas lights go dark.

Most cease to glow long before the end of the old Western 12 days of Christmas tradition, which ends Jan. 6. Many are switched off or packed away even before the Eastern Christian leave-taking of the Nativity Dec. 31.

The receding of the lights illuminates just how much of what passes for the commemoration of Christmas isn’t.

Late Friday night before Christmas this year I found myself in the admitting room of All-Care animal hospital in Fountain Valley with my husband and one of our four cats, Lily. Lily was seriously ill and about to have emergency surgery.

Above the desk where I stood fidgeting was a jaunty plaque featuring a snowman wishing visitors “Winter Greetings.” It was a safe acknowledgment of the celebratory season we were in.

Whatever the various religious persuasions of the hospital’s myriad clients, it was indisputably winter — at least as much as it ever is here in temperate Orange County. When I hear other Christians grumbling about the use of salutations such as this one or the more common “Happy Holidays” or “Seasons Greetings,” I take exception.

Let those who are not celebrating Christmas use them, I say. Why not leave “Merry Christmas” and other Christmas greetings to Christians? It’s where they belong.

In fact, as each year passes, I wish more and more that we had separate names as well for the secular and the religious celebrations that fall together Dec. 25. After all, Christmas derives from the Old English “Christe Maesse” and means the Festival of Christ.

Eastern Orthodox Christians still call it more pointedly by the name Nativity of Christ. It is the feast that remembers the birth of Jesus Christ.

Without Christ, Christmas really isn’t Christmas at all. So for those who are not venerating his birth, why not call it the Winter Holiday?

Or for those who are drawn lock, stock and barrel into the commercial fanfare of Santa Claus, gifting themselves into a year’s worth of debt, why not call it, perhaps, the Great Winter Feast of Excess? The only thing these different celebrations hold in common is a date.

So when the Christmas lights thin as New Year’s Day approaches, I keep my eyes first on the rest of Christmas then on the Holy Theophany. This keeps me from falling for the idea that what we just celebrated is now simply over and done with.

On the Christian calendar, the fading secular year and the pregnant new one are bound together by the Nativity of Christ (a.k.a. Christmas) and the Holy Theophany (a.k.a. Epiphany) and the feast days that fall between them.

Every one of these days is a day to contemplate the wonder of which St. John wrote in his gospel: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” Born to a young Jewish woman named Mary, who was to name him Jesus, God chose to come as one of us into the very world he himself had made.

Eastern Orthodox churches devote the day after the Nativity of Christ to Mary, the Mother of God — the Holy Theotokos. Orthodox Christians honor her for her humility and for her compliance in doing the will of God.

In the West, Dec. 26 marks the Feast of St. Stephen, the first martyr among Christians. While Eastern Orthodox Christians honor this deacon of the Church and early convert to Christianity Dec. 27.

St. Stephen is renowned for his forgiveness as recounted in the biblical Acts of the Apostles.

As he was stoned to death, it is said that he in the manner of Christ on the cross, “kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, ‘Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.’”

In remembering the martyr’s compassion and faith, Christians hope and pray God will grant them the grace to follow Stephen’s example.

The Church East and West remembers the massacre of 14,000 infants, the Holy Innocents, in Bethlehem by King Herod who feared the birth of the Christ child who was rumored to be the King of the Jews.

Too young to know or to do the will of God like St. Stephen, they died just as unjustly for Christ.

On New Year’s Day, while many a hung-over soul recuperates in front of the television, taking in the Tournament of Roses parade then the Rose Bowl game, others will TIVO the events while they attend church services commemorating the Circumcision of Jesus Christ.

The feast marks the day, eight days after his birth, that Jesus was circumcised according to Mosaic Law and received his name.

It was through circumcision that male children were brought into the community of the chosen people of God.

For the church, circumcision is a prefigurement of Christian water baptism, described in the New Testament book Colossians as “the circumcision made without hands.”

By the sacrament of water baptism, male and female children or adult converts are made members of the church.

Twelve days after Christmas, Jan. 6, Eastern Orthodox churches and churches in the West celebrate Epiphany (manifestation), or the Theophany (manifestation of God).

The Western church looks to the adoration of Jesus by the three magi, who as non-Jews are seen as symbols for the revelation Christ outside the Jewish community. The Eastern Orthodox Church focuses on the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, which revealed the Holy Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The feast is sometimes called the “Feast of Light” — the light of Christ, the light of God in the darkness of our world. This is the light to which the lights that deck our houses and trim our Christmas pines are meant to point.

It is a light, we can rest assured, that will never go dark. Without it, there is no reason to celebrate on Dec. 25 at all.

MICHÈLE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She can be reached at [email protected].