Last April, during Holy Week, a Catholic neighbor of mine in Madrid corrected me when I wished him “Happy Easter” in the middle of the week. You don’t say Felices Pascuas until Sunday, he explained, because that’s when Christ was resurrected. That made perfect sense given that the joy of Easter can only be understood in the context of the story of Jesus’ persecution and crucifixion.
It occurred to me that in the U.S. our greetings sometimes lack nuance and squeeze the meaning out of celebrations whose significance are as much about process as they are about outcomes. Public culture in America is deeply secular and, therefore, time is generally seen as linear. Things are assumed either to get better over time or to fall off a cliff like Thelma and Louise.
While European societies have been thoroughly secularized, the memory of ancient, circular liturgical time is still baked into the language and ways of celebration. Their language still implicitly retains the wisdom that Catalán architect Antoni Gaudí articulated so well. “The straight line belongs to man, the curved one to God.”
In Germany, where my wife was raised, Advent, the four-week season leading up to Christmas, is widely observed publicly by media and political figures. In my wife’s hometown, the city hall is turned into a giant Advent calendar with a new window being opened every night to reveal a picture behind it. The final window is opened on Christmas Eve.
That helps explain why each November, wherever we are, I buy my wife an Advent calendar so she can count down the days leading up to Christmas. Ticking off the days and enjoying the calendar’s embedded chocolate treats only enhances her anticipation for the holiday. And that’s the point.
Yet, I still had not fully learned my lesson about the importance of process and anticipation. A few days ago in Madrid, a friend rebuffed me for wishing him a happy new year too early.
In Spain, he told me, we wish people una buena salida y entrada de año (good exit to this year and entrance to the next) in the days leading up to the New Year. That, too, makes sense. Ending this year well helps ensure a good start to the next.
In Germany, where I am today, I’m determined not to make the same mistake. Today, I am wishing people Guten Rutch, a good slide into the new year, another saying that places the meaning in the process of transition rather than merely on the culmination of a story or the start of a new one. Only after midnight on December 31, will I begin to wish folks a Frohes Neues Jahr.
Tomorrow, we’ll fly back to Spain to prepare to celebrate the arrival of the Three Kings, another story whose ultimate meaning can be found in their journey and their search for Jesus.
But the denouement of the story of the Magi also carries tremendous meaning which I’ve always found appealing. Having been warned in a dream of Herod’s desire to have Jesus killed, the Three Wise Men journeyed home by another way to keep the Christ Child’s location secret. Their willingness to make a last-minute change of plans may be the best advice of all on how to approach a new year.
