There’s zero obligation for Catholics to go to Marian shrines. The decision to visit them is totally voluntary. Many shrines do attract large numbers of pilgrims; the Marian apparition site at Lourdes, France, for example, attracts about five million pilgrims a year. Some come in hope for healing (the spring at Lourdes has been associated with miraculous physical cures), while others come hoping to enrich their prayer lives, while others come out of curiosity. But Catholics are not required to visit any shrine, Marian or otherwise, during their lives.…

Mary is the English translation of the Hebrew name Miriam. There are different opinions on what it means; some sources say that it means “bitter,” or “beautiful one,” while others say that it derives from the Egyptian word that means “beloved.” It was a common female name at the time of Jesus, as is evident from all the different Marys who show up in the Gospels. This popularity is likely due to the fact that Miriam was the name of the sister of Moses, a well-known woman in the Jewish tradition.…

The best way to become a lector is to either talk to your pastor or talk to the person in charge of the Lector ministry in your parish. I suggest that you go to the parish website or the parish bulletin to find the correct contact information. Once you get in touch with the Coordinator for your respective ministry, you will probably have to do specialized training (but don’t worry — it won’t be too involved).…

A Call to Worship is the moment at the beginning of prayer or Mass when someone calls us together and centers us as a community. The Call to Worship usually takes the form of a welcome to the entire parish community. Sometimes birthdays, anniversaries or other special events are announced. And finally, in some parishes, the Call to Worship is a tool to help us remember that as we celebrate the Mystery of the Eucharist, we are always in God’s presence.
Not every parish uses a Call to Worship at the beginning of mass or at a prayer service. Those that do, have found it to be helpful in reminding the community that this is a special time where we come together to pray.…

Let me begin by stating who the “magi” were not, at least according to Scripture. There is no evidence in Matthew’s Gospel (2:1-18) — the only one to mention the magi — that they were “three kings.” This tradition may have evolved because Psalm 72, which was perhaps a coronation psalm, contains a reference to kings rendering tribute and homage to Israel’s king.
The New Testament also does not state that there were three of them. Probably the number three became associated with them because they offered three gifts. In fact, artwork has portrayed them in varying numbers through the centuries, and the Eastern (Orthodox) Church has always depicted them as 12 in number. They were not named…

We don’t know exactly what Jesus called his mother when he was young. The Gospels don’t include any stories where the child Jesus addresses Mary directly, so we can only guess. It seems logical to assume that the young Jesus would have called his mother the Aramaic verison of “Mommy” or “Mama” (Aramaic was the language spoken by Jesus and his community).
We have a little more to go on when Jesus is an adult. In the Gospels, there are two separate occasions when he addressed his mother as “woman” (both at the Wedding at Cana in John 2:4, and while Jesus is on the cross, in John 19:26). Though this sounds harsh to modern ears, it was actually a term indicating respect.…

Christmas pageants often show the shepherds leaving the stage to make room for the magi who have come to worship the newborn Jesus. Yet according to Matthew’s Gospel (the only one mentioning the magi) Jesus was probably significantly older by the time the magi found their way to him. This detail is suggested by the fact that King Herod “sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men” (Mt 2: 16) who had informed him previously of the star which rose heralding Jesus’ birth. Also interesting to note is that when the magi arrived, they found the baby Jesus with his mother Mary in a house (!), not a stable as we commonly…

As Catholics, we don’t believe that ANYTHING in the Bible is invented. Rather, everything in the Bible is inspired. In other words, God is the author of the Bible and human authors wrote the Scriptures down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
With that in mind, the Catechism (#115-117) teaches us to recognize that the Bible works on 2 levels: the literal and the spiritual. This means that, even when events described in the Bible may not be intended to be understood literally, they nonetheless teach spiritual truth.
Of course, your question is asking whether or not the infancy narratives (found only in Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels) are factual (can be taken literally as historical accounts)…

It is Luke’s Gospel that gives us the famous picture of the newborn babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger (Lk 2:1-20). Luke never specifies that Jesus was born in a stable or a cave; he only states that there was no room for them in the inn. Many have come to imagine the birthplace as a stable because of the note about the manger, another name for an open box or feeding trough for livestock. The image of a cave can be traced back to the apocryphal “Infancy Gospel of James” (probably written in the mid-second century), which places Mary and Joseph there at the time of Jesus’ birth.
Another possibility that scholars have offered is that the Holy Family might have ended their journey in the courtyard…

Most experts are quick to point out that the Kwanzaa is absolutely NOT a religious or political holiday. In fact, it was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga, a professor at California State University 1966. Professor Karenga wanted to establish for people of African descent in America and around the world a way to celebrate family, culture and community. The seven principles of Kwanzaa are Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective work and responsibility), Ujamaa (cooperative economics), Nia (purpose), Kuumba (creativity) and Imani (faith). These seven principles are each designated one day of celebration during the seven days of the Kwanzaa season which is celebrated from December…

An exact date was attempted to be calculated for the Nativity of the Lord but it was deemed impossible (there was/is not enough information available to determine this).  So originally, March 25th the first day of spring was discussed as an appropriate day to celebrate the birth of Christ to coincide with the re-birth of the spring!   However, other scholars noted that this would be a better day to place Jesus’ conception, as we believe that God becomes incarnate at the moment he is in Mary’s womb.
Therefore, if we add 9 months to that date we get…December 25th!
Secondarily, many Romans were sun worshipers.   Many celebrated a kind of sun feast day on Dec. 25, while others note a virility god…

Keeping vigil has always been a spiritual practice in Catholicism. This is what we are essentially doing by attending any “Vigil” mass, we wait in joyful hope for the coming of the Savior.

There is also a Biblical reference here that can be included. The Shepherds in Luke’s infancy narratives in his Gospel were keeping watch over their sheep on the nightly vigil. In a sense, we are the same shepherds today and we are entrusted to keep watch over one another.

Absolutely. Anglican and Lutheran traditions have been celebrating Advent for centuries. Other Christian traditions have picked it up over the years, but the practice varies from congregation to congregation, depending on their polity and liturgical traditions.…

One beautiful Christmas tradition in the Philippines is the novena known as Simbang Gabi, from Tagalog words meaning “night worship” (sometimes translated as “misa de gallo” or “mass of the rooster” because of the early morning hour at which these masses are celebrated.)
Spanish missionaries instituted the custom of celebrating masses on the nine days before Christmas, bringing together the entire community to prepare for the birth of Christ; the early morning hour allowed fishermen and farmers to participate before setting out for the day’s labor. After the Simbang Gabi masses, villagers would socialize and share festival foods.
Today Simbang Gabi masses are celebrated not only in the…

The church has never shied away from appropriating signs, symbols and rituals from the culture in which it finds itself and “baptizing” them, so to speak, and giving to them a Christian meaning. Christ himself did this in his own public ministry, using the rituals of his day and giving them new meaning in the order of Grace. Two obvious examples are his transformation of the ritual of baptism from a simple act repentance into the first rite of initiation into Church and his transforming of the Passover Meal into the Eucharist on Holy Thursday.
According to Fr. William Saunders at the Catholic Education Resource Center, “there is evidence of pre-Christian Germanic peoples using wreathes with lit candles…

Of course they are! Catholics are free to sing “Jingle Bells” or “Frosty the Snowman” or any of the many songs that reflect the Christmas season.

Perhaps there are song parodies that might be objectionable material in general, but most of the tried and true carols that we know well can be sung by Catholics.

Many families do wait until Christmas Eve or Christmas Day to put the baby Jesus into the manger scene, for the reason that he has not yet been born, and that an empty manger captures the spirit of Advent. This, as you’ve pointed out, means that Mary ends up spending a few weeks kneeling by an empty manger. If manger scenes had poseable figurines, I suppose that could be changed, and she could be in some other posture. In general, though, we just work with the limitations of the figurines we have, and try not get too literal about what it means. The important thing is that Mary, like all of the rest of us, was actively waiting for the birth of her son, and celebrated his birth when he did arrive.
By the way, many families put…

“Swaddling clothes” can also be translated as “cloth strips,” “bands of cloth” or even “rags.” It is likely Mary and Joseph used what little they had on hand at the end of an unanticipated 70 mile trip to Bethlehem that would have taken them several days to a week to walk. This is one of several details in Luke’s Gospel that suggest Mary and Joseph were poor parents bringing a child into the world in a tenuous situation. (Luke 2:1-24)…

While “Hanukkah bushes”, so called, have found their way into some American Jewish household, the practice is still relatively rare. Most Jews that I know do not like the practice simply because it smacks of “synchretism”, the amalgamation of symbols and rituals of different religions which are truly representative of none. One may call it a “Hanukkah Bush”, but it looks and awfully lot like a Christmas tree. For the same reason, it really doesn’t make much sense for Christians to have Menorah’s in their households at Christmas. What does make sense is for Christian and Jewish neighbors to share with each other the richness of their traditions as they live it authentically in their homes.…

Question: Should I have my kids only receive gifts for a charity this Christmas or would that be against our tradition?  We’re pretty well off but I understand that we really should exchange some kind of gift during the Christmas season?
We live in convoluted and confusing times.  Before the present economic crisis, people in the USA spent $200 Billion a year on Christmas gifts (de Graff cited in Malloy 2007:144).  That’s $850 per person! (I need go get better friends).  All this to celebrate the birth of Jesus born in poverty.  We often give someone something they really don’t want or need, and, a few months later, cannot remember what the gift was (or what was given us in return).
Nowhere in canon…