I love Christmas. I enjoy the
worship – the re-telling of the Nativity
Story and the singing of the carols. I look forward to the festivities, the
mulled wine on Christmas Eve and the sparkling wine on Christmas Day, the
family around, the food to enjoy and the fire in the grate. Lovely!
When it comes to the Christmas
services, while I know that very many folks appreciate the Christmas Eve
midnight service, I think I find myself more drawn to the Festival of Lessons
and Carols when the familiar carols are sung and the sequence of biblical
readings sets the birth of Jesus into the wider context of unfolding salvation
history.
But I also adore Advent. I
appreciate Advent not simply because it is a time of preparation, anticipation
and hope, but because it is a season which dares to tackle some of the more
difficult biblical themes such as death, judgement, the Second Coming of Jesus
and so forth.
And I hate the way in which Advent
has become invaded by Christmas! Why can we not allow Advent to be Advent?
Now lest I be considered a real
Scrooge (and I have lately been so accused!) let me say again how much I love
Christmas and let me confess to writing this blog in the shadow of a decorated
Christmas Tree! But I did get a bit irritated when two weeks ago I received a
text from a family member asking when we could exchange family Christmas
presents and again last week when Edinburgh launched its Christmas celebrations
with fireworks, tree and Santa... before we had even marked St Andrew's Day,
far less begun to mark Advent!
Before Advent had begun, Christmas
Trees had appeared, I had been approached by Santa outside Fraser's, I heard a
brass band playing 'Jingle Bells' and adverts on the television kept insisting
that 'It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas'!
Where did Advent go?
Why are some churches already
singing carols?
When did we allow Advent to become
simply the prelude to and a preview of Christmas?
A former colleague used to hold
off choosing any Christmas hymn in worship until after midnight on Christmas
Eve (and then - of course - his congregation would go on joyfully singing them
right through the Season of the Incarnation). I can sympathise with his viewpoint.
After all we would never dream of singing 'Thine be the Glory' on Good Friday,
would we?
But – unlike him – I have never
been able to sufficiently resist the congregational demands or the external
expectations to completely avoid singing a Christmas hymn during Advent (although
I do try to avoid congregational carols until the Sunday before Christmas).
Of course missional and pastoral
considerations play a part in our decisions. We touch here on a much bigger
tension regarding when it is appropriate to respond to culture and the
opportunities with which we are presented and when we need to be
counter-cultural.
But that will take us down another
road.
Back to Advent.
I do not think of myself as a
liturgical purist (although I was recently - and unfairly in my view - accused
of being a liturgical legalist on this matter!) But if we continue to allow
Christmas to so take over Advent that this wonderful season becomes nothing
more than preparation, prelude and preview then I have a number of concerns.
Do we also then follow the trend
of seeing Christmas Day as a huge climax after which we forget all about the
Incarnation and stop singing Christmas hymns rather than regarding Christmas
Day as the beginning of the Season of the Incarnation with so much depth to the
mystery of the Incarnation to be explored through the weeks after Christmas and
Epiphany?
Are we in danger of being moulded
by a culture that no longer sees any necessity for or virtue in the discipline
of waiting? (I heard the other day of a mother telling her very young daughter that
she could not have a Christmas Tree up quite yet; it was not yet time. I
suspect that little girl may be learning appropriate values which others could
be denied.) People have forgotten how to wait.
Could we be missing many pastoral
and missional opportunities of offering an alternative way of approaching
Christmas for those (the many?) who despair of the pressure, commercialism,
enforced jollity etc that seems to dominate from mid-November? (It is argued by
some that the church is at its missional best when it is counter-cultural. I
think that may be right.).
But my biggest concern is this.
When does the church deal with the big and important themes represented by
Advent if Advent itself becomes swamped by Christmas? The issue of waiting and
waiting and waiting more for God's promises to be fulfilled and for our prayers
to be answered; questions of life and death, light and darkness; the challenges
of repentance and judgement... and so on.
At that other great annual
Christian festival – Easter - I have
fears that many Sunday worshippers (who may not attend worship through Holy
Week and on Good Friday) can move directly from the Hosannas of Palm Sunday to
the Hallelujahs of Easter Sunday without having journey to and through Gethsemane
and Golgotha.
I suppose that is similar to what
I fear most about the Christmasization of Advent.
So, what HAS become of Advent?
