Orthodox Portal

“The Divine Logos, who once for all was born in the flesh always in His compassion desires to be born in Spirit in those who desire Him. He becomes an infant and molds Himself in them through the virtues… The great mystery of the Incarnation of Christ remains a mystery eternally. Not only is what is not yet seen of it greater than what has been revealed… but also what is revealed still remains entirely hidden and is by no means known as it really is… for when He wished to come down to the level of being, He became being in a manner which transcends being… for the manner in which He became man always remains unrevealed, for He was made man in a way which transcends man.” (Philokalia, Vol 2, pp. 166-7.)

The glorious Evangelist Luke, taught both by worldly wisdom and by the Holy Spirit, lays very careful emphasis on the fact of the holy Virgin’s supernatural conceiving. For all those who might be troubled in their minds by this, Luke the Evangelist is welcome as a helper to their conscience. Saint Luke was a doctor, first of the body and then later of the Spirit.
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I suspect that the custom of decorating a tree at Christmas time is not simply a custom which came to us from the West and which we should replace with other more “orthodox” customs. To be sure, I have not gone into the history of the Christmas Tree and where it originated, but I think that it is connected with the Christmas feast and its true meaning.
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“The Cave in which Christ was born is a type of the Church. St. Athanasius the Great speaks specifically in saying the small room where the Theotokos awaited the birth has been accepted as the type of the Church. The manger is seen as the Altar, Joseph the server, the Magi are the clergy, the Shepherds are the deacons, the angels are the Priests, the Lord is the Bishop, the Virgin is the Throne, the craters in the cave are the chalices, the incarnation is the Vestment, the Cherubim are the [liturgical] fans, the Holy Spirit is the paten, the Father Who overshadows all things with His power is the veil covering the paten.” (The Twelve Feasts of the Lord. pg. 60.)
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The original Santa Claus was…of course St. Nicholas. In the 16* century in Holland, Dutch children would place their wooden shoes by the hearth in hopes that they would be filled with treats. The Dutch spelled St. Nicholas as Sint Nikolass, which became corrupted to Sinterklaas, and finally, in Colonial America’s New Amsterdam (which would later become New York), it was changed to Santa Claus.
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