Being God's Man by Finding Contentment(The Everyman Series) Book

"In a way, Christmas is valued disproportionately, because most people don't have a single other ritual of sacred time in the whole year to help them distribute and develop the meaning of Christmas." p. 80

This book is an exploration of the traditional liturgical year. The book explores the history of the holidays, their significance in the human psyche, and traditional celebrations. At the end of each section he does give some suggestions of things to do, but this is not the focus of this book and there are many other books that would be better if that is what you are looking for.

The book talks extensively about ancient traditions from not just Judaism and the Eastern Rite churches, but from the Greek and Roman World and the British Isles. The focus of the book is Jesus and his ministry, but if you dislike Halloween because you perceive it to be a pagan holiday then don't read this book. Nearly every holiday is a fusion of ancient religous practices and christian belief.

for the most part i liked this book. It had a great deal of interesting information. The author has really thought about the liturgical year and its significance. I especially liked how he embraced the natural world as part of his explanations. The section on Summer, filled with Ordinary time, was especially good. the importance of Ordinary time tends to get over looked which he acknowledges and gives reasonable explanations for.

my biggest complaint is his argument style. In several places instead of making a well reasoned argument for his point, he strings together some sentances that are only tangentially related. And while i understood the point he was trying to make, i wish he would have been a little less obtuse. the section on February was especially difficult for me to follow.