Part Seven: Prayers For Holidays And Holy Days

: Prayers for Holidays and Holy Days

WHEN I WAS YOUNG, my jaw dropped when I learned that the word holiday came from holy day. After all, I’d heard cultural commentators warn against the danger of a store clerk bidding a shopper “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” With all my ten-year-old enthusiasm, I took to shouting, “Happy Holy Days!” quite frequently—and it wasn’t annoying at all. Now, as a parent to a ten-year-old myself, I’m in awe of my parents’ patience.

What are holy days—or Christian holidays—and what sets them apart from the rest of our yearly celebrations and days of observation? Theologies and preferences vary between Christian denominations, and so do the days set aside as holy. But we’re united as one body of believers. We base our rhythms on a church calendar made up of sacred days and observations that point us to Jesus. The church year works as scaffolding, holding us together and reminding us of our unity in Christ.

As I’ve become more intentional about seeking God in the ordinary and extraordinary moments of parenting, I’ve found myself becoming more rooted to the rhythms of the church calendar, learning that these sacred seasons and days have a way of orienting us to God’s time.

We know that God is the creator and keeper of time, working within the constraints of our world—and outside them. Scripture refers to time in two ways, as chronos and kairos. Chronos is where our word chronological comes from—it’s the passing of time minute by minute. Kairos is a bit tougher to define. It’s the passing of time moment by moment.

In our family, we have a kitchen calendar that organizes the comings and goings of our daily life—soccer practice, doctor’s appointments, school performances. My husband and I share color-coded online schedules, and my watch is ready to remind me that I’m running late. (I usually am.)

God’s time shows us a new way.

Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro, compilers of Common Prayer, a collection of modern liturgies, put it this way: “The church calendar does not help us remember our meetings, but it aims at nothing less than changing the way we experience time and perceive reality.”4

If chronos is a line, kairos is a circle. Chronos is our human way to measure time, but kairos is a mind-bending way to understand a God who is both in and out of time, in and out of our world, our galaxy, our universe. Kids seem to have an imagination for this—superheroes traverse time and space, and timelines are rarely chronological. And as my seven-year-old recently told me when we were playing with action figures, “This guy is from another dimension.”

Holy days remind us that we’re in the world but not quite of it. The authors of Common Prayer put words to this head-scratching idea: “We are citizens of the kingdom that transcends time, but we sojourn on a time-bound earth. Without liturgical time, we can easily forget our eternal identity.”5

So where does that leave us?

The church year reminds us of our identity as children of God and creates a cyclical framework that holds us together through observing, honoring, and celebrating the good news of Jesus.

May the prayers in this section guide us as we explore what it means to be set apart. May they help us remember that we are not alone in our parenting. When we’re bombarded by meetings and a world calling out for our family’s attention 24/7, may these prayers remind us of who we are and the vibrant family of God we belong to. You’ll find prayers for familiar holidays and holy days, such as New Year’s, Easter, and Christmas. You’ll also find a smattering of prayers for holy days that may be new to you. In addition to St. Patrick’s Day and St. Valentine’s Day, you’ll also find the Feast Day of St. Oscar Romero and the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi. (For more on the liturgical calendar, see the appendix on page 205.)

These observances help us remember church history so we can raise families that look to the future in hope. It’s only when we begin to understand the past, both in Scripture and in our own lives, that we begin to understand the fullness of time.