For anyone who seeks out the real meaning of “the holidays,” the last few days before Christmas are the most powerful period of Advent and one of the most beautiful times in the year. The Octave before Christmas, Dec. 17-23, is the time of the “O Antiphons.”
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And here, in a terrific page, is everything about the O Antiphons, including texts in Latin and English, and nicely sung too (MP3 files).
http://fisheaters.com/customsadvent10.html
Thinking of Pieper's great, dense but slim book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture
and thinking there should be one on Liturgy, The Performative Basis of Culture. Not quite so counter-intuitive or striking, I admit. For more on liturgy as performance and the "making of humanity," see Roy Rappaport's extraordinary (but thick as well as dense) study Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity
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