A Feast to Our Lady of Merriment

"Merry does not mean drunk, or uproarious, or frivolous. It means that a man is light-hearted, that his mind is at ease, that he is in a good humour, that he is ready to share a bit of fun with his neighbours. There is humility in the word, and innocence, and comradeship.
"And such a frame of mind as that is not to be secured, by grown-up people, through a continuous whirl of excitements, or a long course of dissipations. It comes from within."
Father Ronald Knox in Captive Flames

I humbly but heartily propose a new title for Mary, an additional appellation, which is, Our Lady of Merriment. What is more, I propose a new feast day for Mary as Our Lady of Merriment, and that this day be September 22, one week after the day of Our Lady of Sorrows. Our Lady calls us to penance, but I believe she also calls us to merriment. If we partake of true merriment -- light-heartedness, innocent fun, jovial camaraderie -- enjoying the good gifts of God, then we will be less likely to turn to false merriment -- to frenetic pursuits and vapid distractions, to greed and drunkenness and promiscuity, to darkness and despair.

True merriment is the interplay of sacrifice and joy, pain and pleasure, surrender and fulfillment. It is fasting and feasting, not one or the other. It is both living in the moment and living for eternity. There is meaning to merriment, just as there is meaning to sorrow. True merriment is giving, sharing; false merriment is grasping, groping. Merriment nurtures lasting friendships, not flimsy alliances. Merriment is the highest form of happiness, for merriment is not haphazard or happenstance; it is not lost by mishaps; it never leaves one hapless. False merriment is one-night stands and hangovers and regrets; true merriment, in good times and bad, is secure, satisfying, enduring -- ultimately, everlasting!

The English convert Father Ronald Knox, in Captive Flames: on selected saints and Christian heroes (republished by Ignatius Press), writes of St. George, the patron saint of England, that the connection between the saint and the country seems rather faint, that is except for an old phrase, "Saint George for merry England!" and also the saint's popular placement over the doors of inns, the sign of "The George and Dragon." Knox wrote, "In that most essentially English of our institutions, the country inn, our national Saint does seem to have come to his own. He has passed, somehow, into that tradition of hearty good-fellowship, of beef-eating and beer-drinking jollity, of which Chaucer first hymned the praises and Dickens wrote the epitaph."

Knox, writing in the days between the world wars, 1919 to 1939, says not only that England is no longer merry, but that England will not be merry until it is Catholic, until it returns to the Catholic faith that England held close for centuries before the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic faith that made England what it truly is, what it should be, that made England merry. "The more England becomes Catholic, the more English she will become," says Knox.

"A country cannot be merry while it forgets God," he says. "And a country cannot be merry for long, or with safety, if it tries to be Christian without being Catholic.... For these non-Catholic Christianities -- why, I do not know, but as a matter of observation it is true -- always go hand-in-hand with some kind of Puritanism that interferes with man's innocent enjoyments. Sometimes they want to make us all into teetotallers, sometimes they are out against boxing, or racing, or the stage; sometimes they insist that we shall sit indoors all Sunday afternoon and go to sleep. Wherever Protestant opinion really rules a country, you always find legislation of one sort or another which is designed to stop people being merry." (In the 1600s, for example, the puritans of England and colonial New England actually outlawed Christmas; for more on this, see the update to my post of September 8, "An Ode to Our Lady of Merriment.)

Knox writes -- remember, it is sometime between 1919-1939 -- that a rich and powerful Protestant minority still had a tight puritan grip on America (for example, I think of Prohibition), but that Protestantism had already lost its grip on England. "And when Protestantism does lose its grip, a reaction sets in," says Knox, "a reaction against Puritanism, which instead of making people merry makes them dissolute." The description that Knox gives of the dissolute England of his day, though his references now seem quaint, is fascinating for its uncanny resemblance to the dissolute America of our day, an America which has passed from puritanism to paganism with only a passing glance at the merry medium of Catholicism:

"Merry England -- do we talk much about 'merry England' now?" asks Knox. "If you open your morning paper, and cast your eye down the news -- strikes, divorce actions, murders, unemployment statistics, grave warnings to the public, and similar matters that chiefly occupy its pages -- is merry the first word that rises to your lips?

"Oh, I know, we are gay, we are frivolous, we hurl ourselves into our pleasures. No expense can be too heavy for producing a film, for putting on a revue, for hiring a football professional. We dance all night, and play tennis all day -- those of us who have the leisure. But is there not something suspicious about this feverish gaiety of ours, about these demands for a brighter London, this dreary cry for the unsexing of women, these lurid posters that herald our public amusements?

"Does not our laughter ring rather hollow, as if we were making merry not because we feel light-hearted, but because we want to forget the anxieties that are weighing us down? Our industries, our trade, our empire, our birth-rate, our morals -- do they encourage merriment? Our poetry, our clever novels, our art -- do they reflect a mood of happiness? Our expert critics, do they bid us believe that all is well with England? Is our gaiety real, or is it a smile painted on the face of a corpse?"

It is my belief that for true merriment we need Mary -- Queen of Heaven and Earth, Mother of God, and, I propose, Our Lady of Merriment. It is Mary who exclaimed with much merriment, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is might has done great things for me, and holy is his name."