Finding the Real Meaning of Christmas: The Apolytikion of the Forefeast of the Nativity

If you are part of a Western church that tries to live into the Church year, Protestant or Catholic, you know that in Advent there is a battle afoot.

Our churches tell us to focus on Advent. Advent is the ramp-up to Christmas. This season is about waiting for Christ to come — remembering Christmas is weeks or days away.

No carols, please, till the Big Day.

Our culture, on the other hand, tells us that this whole season is already Christmas. Go into a store or turn on the radio and you are barraged with Christmas carols — some are sacred music, some much more secular, but it’s all Christmas all the time.

It has been interesting to me to visit Advent services in an Orthodox church. The Orthodox are all about the Church year. They have 12 major feasts, plus seasons ramping up and cooling down for each one, plus at least one saint for every day you might show up.

But even before Advent has formally begun (in the ramp-up to the ramp-up to Christmas) they are singing hymns that declare Christ’s birth.

My first response is, of course,

They got it all wrong! They need to wait for Christmas.

Their response would surely be

We’ve always done it this way — like for over 1500 years.

Okay, maybe “different” would be a better word than “wrong.” It often is…

In any case, as in all Orthodox worship, much of the theology is carried in the hymns. There is one that I’ve heard in several services this year that carries the real meaning of Christmas.

It’s called the “Apolytikion of the Forefeast of the Nativity.”

You are probably wondering about that name.

“Nativity” is, of course, Christmas.

“Forefeast” is the ramp-up. That’s “Advent” to you and me.

“Apolytikion”? Your guess is as good as mine.

They have confusing names for all different kinds of hymns. Nobody explains. Nobody minds.

As well as having heard it multiple times on multiple occasions, the words are beautiful and fascinating. They play with Biblical images that inform the meaning of Christmas in lovely, paradoxical, meditative ways.

The REAL meaning of Christmas?

I’ll give you the full text, then I’ll share some thoughts line by line. This translation is by Fr. Seraphim Dedes from the rather remarkable “Digital Chant Stand” of the Ages Initiative.

O Bethlehem, prepare, Eden is opened unto all.
And be ready, Ephrata, for the Tree of life
has in the grotto blossomed forth from the Virgin.
Indeed her womb is shown to be spiritually
a Paradise, in which is found the God-planted Tree.
And if we eat from it we shall live,
and shall not die, as did Adam of old.
Christ is born, so that He might raise up
the formerly fallen image.

1. O Bethlehem, prepare, Eden is opened unto all.

Orthodox hymns often highlight the echoes or parallels between different scenes in the great story of salvation. “Typology” is the name for this: typically an Old Testament event or figure will be described as prefiguring or foreshadowing something in the New Testament event — especially Jesus.

In this first line of the hymn the parallel is between the Garden of Eden and Bethlehem, where Jesus was born.

The easy association is that Eden is the scene of the original creation, the place where the first human beings are portrayed in Scripture, and Jesus’ birth marks the beginning of the “new creation,” our redeemed life.

The lyric is a little more subtle than that. It points not to our first life in paradise, but rather to humanity being kicked out of the Garden. When we fell into sin, Genesis 3:23-24 tells us that God shoved us out the gate and an angel with a flaming sword guarded it against our return.

So the hymn’s first image of Christmas is this great curse is reversed. Bethlehem needs to get ready for Jesus birth, because with Jesus the gateway to paradise will be wide open to us all.

2. And be ready, Ephrata, for the Tree of life
 has in the grotto blossomed forth from the Virgin.

The second sentence of the hymn continues to meditate on parallels between the Garden of Eden and the birth of Jesus.

The first New Testament reference is “Ephrata” or more typically “Ephrathah,” strangely a word that doesn’t appear in the New Testament.

Matthew provides an Old Testament quotation about Jesus’ birthplace:

And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people Israel.” (Matthew 2:6 NRSV)

The thing is, Matthew misquotes the text. If you look at the original in the Prophet Micah it goes like this:

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
who are one of the little clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
one who is to rule in Israel,
whose origin is from of old,
from ancient days.” (Micah 5:2 NRSV)

So it is not quite a New Testament reference. It is the middle reference in a three-part typological structure:

1. Early OT story: Tree of Life back in the Garden of Eden.
2. Late OT messianic prophecy: Ephrata, i.e. Bethlehem.
3. NT fulfillment: The Virgin Mary in the Grotto.

“Grotto?” you ask.

You Western Christian, you. You probably thought Jesus was born in a barn.

The Orthodox always portray the manger in a cave — a grotto.

Aside from the question of which is more likely in terms of the agricultural architecture, the idea of a cave at Jesus’ birth makes a lovely typological echo for the tomb hewn from the rock after his death.

So yes, a grotto.

The typology in this line of the hymn, however, hinges on how we think about the One to whom Mary gave birth in that cave.

• The New Testament physical personal baby was Jesus.
• But the Old Testament foreshadowing is the Tree of Life from Genesis 3.

Once they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they were no longer allowed to eat of the tree of life.

So how is it that in Bethlehem the way back to Eden will be opened to all?

Because Mary is bringing us back the Tree of Life — which is Jesus.

3. Indeed her womb is shown to be spiritually
a Paradise, in which is found the God-planted Tree.

And that leads to the third step in the typological meditation.

If Jesus is the Tree of Life (which as the source of salvation he surely is — the Way, the Truth and the Life, as he said himself) then what is the place he comes from when he is born?

• The New Testament concrete reality? Mary’s womb where Jesus grew for nine months.
• The Old Testament echo? Paradise itself, the place where the Tree of Life grew.

Yes, the meaning of the types has shifted, hasn’t it? In the first line Eden was our salvation, where we get to be when we receive the Tree of Life. Now in the third line Eden is Mary’s womb.

No, there is not a problem. This is not a rationalistic exercise with proof texts. This is poetry and imaginative theology.

This is worship.

This is prayer.

This is both worship and prayer when both are deeply steeped in Scripture.

4. And if we eat from it we shall live,
and shall not die, as did Adam of old.

So no, we don’t need to go to Mary’s womb.

But yes, we do need to eat of the Tree of Life. We need to come to Jesus and, as he emphasized so strongly in John 6, we need to eat his flesh and drink his blood to have life.

In practical, physical, New Testament terms we need to come to Christ in the Eucharist.

We need to receive him for our spiritual nourishment — because in typological foreshadowy terms, he is the Tree of life.

• Old Testament: Adam died because he was not allowed to eat of the Tree of Life.
• New Testament and our own time: We get to eat of Jesus, the Tree of Life because he sprouted from paradise, Mary’s womb.

5. Christ is born, so that He might raise up
the formerly fallen image.

Letting us eat of the Tree of Life is why Jesus was born in the first place. He reversed the curse. He brings us new and everlasting life.

And as the last line of the hymn indicates, this is something that the Orthodox treat with a very particular kind of clarity and subtlety. Christmas is, theologically speaking, a far bigger deal in Orthodox theology than in Western theology.

In the West, particularly in the Protestant world, we tend to gravitate almost always to the Cross.

You see it in Christmas ornaments in the shape of a cross — reminders at his birth that his death is what we think really counts.

You hear it in our Christmas carols and hymns —

I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die…

We love Christmas, and the Holy Child whose birth we celebrate, but we have little to say about how his birth brings our salvation. At our best we point to John 1 and emphasize that he is God, the Word made flesh. But do we find real saving value in the incarnation before that Friday, thirty-some years later when he died for us?

The Orthodox point to the problem in the Garden. We turned away from God’s way and that damaged us to the core. God’s image was tainted, and our lives, every one of them, moved toward death and decay. No chance, forever after, to eat of the Tree of Life as we were intended.

Then the Orthodox point to the solution in the Grotto. God decided to be born of a woman, fully God and fully human. In the fact of his being born among us, we see our fallen nature restored, united to God’s life-giving and life-filled nature.

Jesus, the Tree of Life is born of Mary. We get to come to him by faith, to eat of him in the Eucharist, and step into the renewal of all that was broken. The door to paradise is opened to us — by the very fact of Jesus’ birth.

“And that,” as Linus said, “is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

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