Christmas II: Carols and Misrecognition

For those who celebrate, I hope everyone had a great Christmas, Hanukkah, Yuletide, Festivus, Kwanzaa, or whatever it is you are celebrating, have celebrated, or will be celebrating!!!

I had the fortune to attend 5 Christmas Eve services and 1 Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. 

There was a surprising amount of consistency between the services of various denominations. Virtually every service featured the carols: "Silent Night," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," "Joy to the World," and "We Three Kings of Orient Are." 

The Scripture readings were almost universally from Luke 2 and Isaiah 9. Some also chose to read the famous John 3:16. 

In this post I will talk about the carols and in the next post I will briefly discuss the chosen Scriptures. 

Catherine Bell in Ritual Theory: Ritual Practice talks about various aspects of ritual/practice, including 'misrecognition.' Rituals feature a misrecognition is of their limits and constraints, and of their ends and means, pg 82. 

One example given is that in a gift exchange there is often a misrecognition of generosity, since the gifts exchanged are usually of approximately equal value pg 83. 

(The basic idea of misrecognition is that ritual participants are involved in something that can not be brought about solely through their actions as individuals.)

If Bonhoeffer was right that Christians should and do participate in the Christmas story, if Walter Kim (the pastor giving the sermon at Park Street) is right that Christians participate in the most epic story ever, then we should take seriously the activities of Christmas services as ritual. 

Thus, we should find instances of misrecognition. 

Two of the services I attended, Park Street Church and King's Chapel, had a mother and father with an infant child dress up as the Holy family (Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus).

Christmas Decorations at Park Street Church

These congregations invited us to adore the Holy family. A deliberate misrecognition of what they were actually doing vs. what was happening in the ritual. (No one really thinks that they were adoring the actual Holy family). 

Many carols exhibit a similar misrecognition. "Silent Night" was sung almost exclusively in the present tense. Almost as if by singing the song we were witnessing Christ's birth. 

Two others, "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and "We Three Kings of Orient Are" start with present tense while Christ is being born and end either in the contemporary world using present tense or reference the fulfillment of Christ's life. For instance, in "We Three Kings of Orient Are", the final verse references the 'stone cold tomb.'

Many liturgical calendars also exhibit a similar misrecognition of time. 

According to many traditions, Christmas or Christmastide is actually twelve days and ends with Epiphany. In twelve days of ritual time we go from the birth of Christ to Epiphany.

Thus, the Christmas story, more than most Christian stories has a tendency to mesh the beginning and end of Christ's life. 

Arguably all of these are examples of a 'misrecognition' of time and place with believers being invited to participate in witnessing the birth of Christ as if it is currently happening. 

Spotlight on Witchcraft IV: Reflections and Recap

Ritual in Witchcraft:

Witchcraft generally emphasizes ritual. 


Where a Christian book store would focus its inventory on devotional books and books on theology, a store dedicated to Witchcraft typically sells objects, such as wands and potion ingredients, used to perform rituals.  


For those who practice, witchcraft has understandable and repeatable rules . Thus, understanding ritual theory (including what a ritual is and how rituals are created) will help us understand Wicca. 


When discussing what ritual is, we should avoid two pitfalls. The first is claiming that ritual is entirely distinct from everyday activities, while the second (and opposite) is that ritual is virtually identical to everyday activities.

Catherine Bell offers a good way to begin thinking about ritual:

...ritualization is a way of acting that is designed and orchestrated to distinguish and privilege what is being done in comparison to other, usually more quotidian, activities. (Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, pg. 74)

Ritual is ritual by virtue of the intention of people to set the ritual action apart from other activities that they perform in their normal lives. That is, according to Bell, ritual is not a time to commune or access the sacred, but rather ritual creates a sacred time and space. 



According to Bell, ritual structures community through manipulation of bodies; and community structures rituals through beliefs. 


It is the first structuring aspect of ritual that is immediately apparent given that contemporary witchcraft does not (comparatively to other religions) have deep historical ties to its sources. 


The circle that I participated in on Samhain (Oct. 31) had us chant "We are a circle, inside a circle, with no beginning, and never ending." While chanting we physically created this reality, becoming a circle inside of a circle. 

Gallow's Hill, Salem - Samhain 2015

Then we asked for protection from the Guardians of the North, East, South, and West, individually. This can be interpreted as calling on the larger circle (of the earth) for protection of the circle we had just created. (Though I am unsure that the Wiccans participating would agree.)


Only after this did we call on the central deities of Wicca, the Triple Goddess and the Great Horned God.  


Thus, this ritual structures this community by influencing them to physically act out the nature of the cosmos physically reinforcing their metaphysics AND the communities structured this ritual based on their understanding of reality. 


This is a nifty little feed back loop, theory of ritual that makes sense of large portions of the Samhain Sabbat. 


Much more could be said about the rituals of the Wiccans based on ritual theory, including its emphasis on binaries such as inside vs. outside, and male vs. female


Wicca would be a good case study for a scholarly discussion of ritual theory in practice. Particularly how people are creating, recreating, and/or discovering rituals might give us insight into ritual theory. 


This is especially true since Bell states at the beginning of her book that ritual theory both structures ritual and is structured by ritual, in a similar way that ritual structures and is structured by community. 

The Town of Salem:

As someone interested in the history of religion in America, I would be interested in reading a book about the history of contemporary witchcraft in Salem. 

I would be interested to learn how Salem became a central location for modern Wicca and whether/how its history influenced people to become witches. 

There is no direct connection between the people accused of witchcraft centuries ago and contemporary witches. The former were accused of making pacts with the devil and the later worship a God and Goddess not Satan.