How the Oxford Movement Saved Christmas

From First Things:

The Tracts were not just intellectual exercises; they raised awareness of this complacency among the public, similar to the function of the Federalist Papers in early America. They compiled the perspectives of a variety of intellectual leaders who wrote with erudition and pugnacity, attempting to convince the public that significant institutional change was necessary. They saw the current state of the Anglican church as too willing to compromise with the secular world, and too unwilling to view its own traditions as relevant and living. For the Tractarians, church rituals were not anachronisms or embarrassments but keys to strengthen belief. Lytton Strachey argued that Christians must remember “the presence of the supernatural in daily life,” and wryly noted that taking the Christian religion seriously “had not been done in England for centuries.”

Unlike the Puritans they opposed, the Tractarians did not think zeal and devotion alone could heal the malaise that dampened religion in Britain. Instead, the Tractarians viewed the elaborate forms and rites of medieval Christianity, eschewed by their Puritan brethren as obstacles to true worship, as integral components of England’s lost zeal. As Newman wrote in 1834, Anglicanism succumbed to this malaise through “the neglect of the daily service, the desecration of festivals, the Eucharist scantily administered.” Those who seek to restore religious rites today are in many ways ideological descendants of Newman—a worthwhile lineage, considering how successfully the Tractarians shaped religious life in Britain. As Rowell wrote, the Tractarian movement succeeded in changing many facets of Anglican worship, even among those who did not entirely agree with the movement, to the extent that by the 1870s, “Christmas decorations in churches and special Christmas observances were no longer” merely characteristic of the Tractarians. These observances included the widespread implementation of musical services on Christmas, and they also included special Christmas charity events, providing additional food and aid to the poor. Revitalizing the observation of Christmas helped to mark it for the Victorians as a time deserving of particular reverence and celebration.

Comments

[Stephen]

This is a very strange few paragraphs, no?

The function of the Federalist Papers was not to "raise awareness of complacency," but to advocate for the US Constitution. Lytton Strachey was not a member of the Oxford Movement, but an early 20th-century openly homosexual literary intellectual. And "unlike the Puritans they opposed"? Isn't that a bit anachronistic? Who was identifying themselves as a Puritan in 1830 England?

None of this is to take away from the central claim; I don't doubt that the OM was interested in bringing back more Christmas celebrations, and did so. Just to say that reading this passage was very strange.