People have opinions about Christmas. Some people love it. Some people hate it. And have love-hate feelings about it.
Advent is an all-purpose spiritual season. It can enrich your Christmas if you love Christmas. It can transform your season into one of joy if you hate Christmas. And it can add more love and take out some hate if you do that love-hate thing with Christmas.
If only they made stain removers that good.
See, since the basic concept of Advent is enjoying Immanuel, “God With Us”, you really can’t go wrong.
I came to Advent because something had to change in how I was doing Christmas. And it seems like there are more and more of us who find Christmas unsatisfying; people who like the presents and the decorations and the festivities but…feel like something is missing.
There is a growing number of “anti-materialism, simplify-the-holidays, spend-less-and-give-more-to-charity” movements, especially within the Christian church. This is great. Especially for those of us, like myself, who are cheap and quiet and who like rules and sit in the corner at Christmas parties criticizing everything anyway. And I gave this mild-mannered Christmas a try.
But you can’t replace something with nothing. You have to replace it with something better. Toning down Christmas doesn’t solve the problem. Giving more to the needy doesn’t make you love yourself and your money less. Keeping your December schedule clear doesn’t necessarily bring peace. Spending less on gifts doesn’t automatically result in greater spirituality. Foregoing the Christmas tree, since it has pagan orgins anyway you know, doesn’t make you love Jesus more. Or love your stuff less.
Plus, some people kind of like parties; God, for example.
So instead of saying ‘no’ to Christmas, I decided to whoop it up and say ‘yes’ to Advent. For me, Advent enhances Christmas. It is Christmas in High-Definition, if Christmas were a TV. Which it is not.
For me, Advent is a perfect distillation of what Christianity is. And I get to celebrate it for a whole month, spending some of my personal time thinking about that and being re-amazed over and over by this story.
Also, from a really practical standpoint, Advent was the perfect solution for my family in terms of establishing family Christmas traditions. We live in the same town as both sets of grandparents, AND our middle child’s birthday is on December 26th. So there are three days in December that mostly a Crazy Present Marathon. And because we celebrate Christmas Eve traditions with my family, and Christmas morning traditions with my husband’s family…we didn’t really have any place to establish our own family traditions.
We chose to make Advent Sundays “our Christmas”. We light a new candle on the Advent wreath, open a present, briefly talk about our Advent word of the week and enjoy a treat together. It is a special, quiet time that is fun and simple, but also meaningful. This isn’t necessarily the traditional way to celebrate Advent, but we adjusted the season to fit our family.
And I have to say, it’s nice to spread out the gift giving. Piles of kids and piles of presents make me think unChristlike thoughts.
Advent gave me a basic structure for changing what, to me, had been an overwhelming pile of unmet expectations and thoughtless obligations, to a meaningful, exciting, intentional, amazing Christmas season.
0 Responses to “why advent?”