Today is the fourth Sunday of Advent, and I would like to try to say something about Advent and about Christmas, and also about the time directly following it. I looked back at what I had recorded a year ago. In fact, one could say: you could simply repeat it. For exactly the same thing is happening as last year. That video then bore the title Christmas, Peace on Earth. And it was meant as a counterweight to the message we had received that we should prepare ourselves for a war and that we would have to take all kinds of measures in order to be properly prepared for it. Within four or five years it would come to that. And furthermore, of course, spending on defence would have to increase. That was essentially the message.
At that time I was truly and genuinely astonished that this had to be said just before Christmas. Now a year has passed. And lo and behold, we receive a similar message from the same man in the same position, who once again – I do not know what the motive is, but in any case he frightens us badly – by saying that Europe is the next target of Russia. We then have to find a way to place that once again. One can of course get rid of it quickly by saying: well, ultimately none of this is true. And we do that too, of course, but it has been said! And it has been said once again during Advent, once again on the way to Christmas.
What I found interesting – I still like to watch and listen to Maarten van Rossem from time to time. Not because I share his views, but because I do share the way in which he presents those views. I find that so refreshing. It actually does not matter what he says; what matters is how he says it. And this man, whom I certainly do not believe to be a conspiracy thinker, said in a subordinate clause in his reaction to this message about Russia’s next target: yes, it could of course all be organised so that it is said in this way. That is actually something only a conspiracy thinker would say – someone who wonders: why is this once again being presented to us so shortly before Christmas, essentially as a Christmas message? I wanted to leave it at that. I think everyone will find their own position in this. But it is striking: I saw that last year it was exactly the same.
What I wanted to say today is that very many people complain that the Christmas atmosphere can no longer be evoked. I have been hearing those complaints for years now. And yes, it is not entirely unfamiliar to me either. When you think back to your younger years, when, coming from our background, we still went to the midnight mass, and you would go to the holy mass on Christmas night – often after a copious evening meal. You would walk through the night to the church, and later, when you came out of the church and walked back home again, that night may well have been more impressive than the holy mass itself!
Something radiated from that night that one otherwise mainly reads or hears about in stories about Christmas. For example, in Mary’s Little Donkey. That is a little book containing beautiful stories for children, in which this enchanted atmosphere is described in all kinds of ways. And you could truly experience that yourself. That has now become very difficult indeed. But that also has to do with the fact that belief in the Christmas festival is no longer so omnipresent, to put it cautiously. And that people, for one reason or another, still want to celebrate Christmas, even with a great deal of flair, but that what it is actually a celebration of is more or less forgotten.
And when you then have a beautiful gathering with your family or with your friends, that shared meal still always contains what it originally was. Namely a feast at which it was celebrated that a child had been born who had set himself a very special task, and whose influence was so strong that it gave rise to a religious current that is still prominently present even in our own time. That was, after all, Christmas: the birth of Jesus.
And around that we have the shepherds in the field who, under a starry sky, receive the announcement that this child has been born. There you experience what stars are. Even if you yourself no longer truly experience them when you look at the night sky today, there is still something perceptible of what the starry sky actually is. And of course, on the other side, the three kings who are even guided by a star on their way. That enchantment, that holiness which radiates from these images, we can hardly do without.
And when one then goes deeper into what the Christmas season actually is, one encounters the principle of the thirteen Holy Nights. This is something I had never heard of in my youth. I really only became acquainted with it when I came to know anthroposophy. And when one delves into it, it turns out to be a very ancient concept, but of a completely different order than in the time after Christ.
When we look at the months, we have sometimes 30 days, then 31 days, and once 28 days, sometimes 29. And all together that brings us to 365 days. But in earlier times the months were truly linked to the position of the moon, and a month was therefore more or less 14 days waxing and 14 days waning, thus 28 days. And when you have that twelve times, you have days left over. Then you have twelve days too many; you have thirteen nights left. And these were seen at the end of the year as the days and nights in which the good spirit more or less withdrew and there was a strong influence of evil. For that there were rituals by means of which people knew how to keep the evil spirit away from themselves. It was therefore actually the darkest time of the year.
Yes, that is an incredibly interesting fact: that when you take the moon as a guide for the months, you indeed fall short by twelve days and thirteen nights. Now it is, in my view, thanks to anthroposophy that one is allowed to experience something entirely different in the twelve Holy Days and thirteen Holy Nights. Namely that in this time one may experience precisely the coming of the light to the earth. There where the darkness is deepest – and that is also the case in nature after all: today we have the shortest day, and it still takes some time before we notice that the days have begun to grow longer again. So in this deepest darkness of nature, an invisible light shines, which is born precisely in this time of the deepest darkness.
Should that not speak to us? Just the thought alone that when the need is greatest, salvation is truly near? When we despair over the darkness that reigns in our time, we may nevertheless feel within that darkness that precisely through this deep darkness the light shines. And that is the concept or the principle of the twelve Holy Days and thirteen Holy Nights. In a time, therefore, in which one could say that earthly forces are strongest and the spirit can work least luminously within them, it is precisely in that time that the Child is born who is the light of the world.
From anthroposophy I then adopted the idea that it is possible to practise a daily meditation during the thirteen Holy Nights, which changes each day. A meditation on twelve principles, which one begins on Christmas Eve and which one ends on the 5th of January, with the thirteenth night being allowed to be a retrospective. In this way one prepares oneself spiritually for the new year.
An example: there are plenty of groups of twelve that one can consider in order to meditate on them. For instance, there is a list of twelve monthly virtues that originally come from Blavatsky and which Rudolf Steiner takes up and presents in his indications for an esoteric training. Those exist, for example. But one also has the twelve exhortations from the Sermon on the Mount. And in this way there are very many possibilities to choose something that contains a kind of development, which one then meditates through during those twelve, thirteen nights, thereby truly sanctifying the coming year.
That force which lies in the thirteen Holy Nights can be learned to be felt, and one can then also feel it again in the Christmas festival. But one has to do something for it. It is no longer the case that when you have a Christmas tree with candles and you find it beautiful and enjoy it, that simply because that Christmas tree illuminates the Christmas dinner you are brought into a Christmas mood. Going to church no longer has that effect either. In our modern time we must become active ourselves.
And one can indeed try every evening from Christmas Eve onward to deepen one’s inner mood. And then go outside as well, even if it is cloudy and you cannot see the stars! When you make an effort to feel, to experience what is present in that dark night, you will learn it. At first you cannot. But you will learn to become aware of that Holy Silence which can only be experienced in this time.
That is what I wanted to say for Christmas. I wish everyone a Blessed Christmas! And a spiritually imbued year 2026 to follow!
