Don’t you love that old song by the Zombies? But that’s not what I’m talking about.
It’s the changing of the season that is right in front of us.
Not fall to winter.
Not fall to “holiday season.”
Not fall to “Christmas shopping season” or “holiday shopping season” or any kind of “shopping season.” Why would we want any season to be defined and circumscribed by shopping?
No, we are nearing the beginning of a new year on the Church Calendar. The civil New Year’s Day is January 1. The schools’ “new year’s day” is the day after Labor Day (even if your school begins earlier than that, that’s when it feels like a new school year). Many businesses have their own fiscal years that begin and end whenever they decide they should.
The “New Year’s Day” for Christians is the First Sunday of Advent, which is 30 November this year. That means this upcoming Sunday (23 November) is the Last Sunday of the Church Year. It is also known as Christ the King Sunday (or The Reign of Christ).
Christ the King Sunday celebrates a very important truth: Christ is the King! I know, that should go without saying. But millions of Evangelical Christians have bought into a scheme that teaches that Christ is not the King yet: that we must await the “millennium” before Christ will rule and reign. This ignores the fact that before he ascended, Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” Not “will be given to me”: has been given. Completed action. Fait accompli. Jesus reigns!
The very next Sunday after Christ the King we celebrate the First Sunday of Advent, also known as Advent Sunday, which highlights the Second Coming (or Second Advent) of Christ. This Jesus whom we worship, who rules and reigns from his heavenly throne, will come again. That is the theme not only of the First Sunday of Advent, but of the entire season of Advent.
You see, Advent is not Christmas. Neither is it “Christmas Junior.” Christmas is Christmas. Advent is Advent. Advent places us in the shoes of God’s people who waited for the First Advent only insofar as it is instructive to us as to how we should await the Second Advent. In Advent, the First Coming should not, must not, be divorced from the Second Coming, because they are two parts of One Story.
When we turn Advent into Christmas, the longing for the Second Coming is replaced by the joy associated with Christ’s birth. Is there a place to celebrate that joy? Absolutely. But why step on Advent to do it?
Yes, the preparation for Christmas can and does begin (for Christians) with the First Sunday of Advent. But that doesn’t mean the celebration of Christmas begins then. If it does, when do we celebrate Advent? We don’t. In our day and time, individuals and families pretty much have to begin their preparations for Christmas with the beginning of Advent. In our fast-paced society, if we were to do all the preparations on Christmas Eve (as was common just a generation ago), Christmas would not be about celebrating at all: it would be about having a stroke! (Even with much advance preparation, many people still feel that way at Christmas.)
Remember It’s a Wonderful Life? Of course you do: it’s on TV about 6,000 times between Thanksgiving and Christmas. When George comes home on Christmas Eve, the family is decorating the Christmas Tree. People are making eggnog and other Christmas treats. The children have just come home from their Christmas parties at school. That’s how it used to be.
We can’t do that anymore. Part of me wishes that we could, but that’s just not realistic. If we are to savor the joy of Christmas (as I believe we should), we have to make preparations earlier than Christmas Eve. That means (at the very least) that we’re going to have to select a tree well before Christmas Eve. It probably means that we’re going to need to put it up and decorate it before Christmas Eve too, unless we want Christmas Eve to be very, very hectic! (Most of you may be wondering why I’d even mention this–doesn’t everyone put their tree up well before Christmas Eve? Traditionally, that is when this activity took place: it wasn’t just a scene from It’s a Wonderful Life.)
Yes (I must admit) it means that craft stores and other types of store must stock Christmas-y stuff well in advance so people can start making gifts for others. It probably also means that retail stores do “need” to decorate for Christmas before Christmas Eve, if we are to prepare for Christmas by doing our gift-selecting in advance.
I say all of this because I have earned a reputation as the “Advent Nazi”: the guy who won’t countenance anything that smacks of Christmas before Christmas Eve. The reputation is pretty accurate. But it’s not because I hate Christmas: it’s because I love Christmas as well as Advent as well as all the other holidays in the Christian Year. And Christmas is just that: only one holiday among many in the Christian Year.
But the “Advent Nazi” image has got to go. It leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths regarding the Christian Year in general and the Advent Season in particular, and that’s not at all my goal. My goal is for people to see the beauty in the rhythm and shape of the Church Year, and how Christmas fits into that rhythm.
So, given the above caveats about the things we must do in our day and time to prepare for Christmas during Advent, here are some things that I still consider real no-no’s:
- Abandoning Advent’s Hymnody - I did a whole post about Advent hymns a couple of years ago. You can go back and read it (and the ensuing discussion). I saw a local church on TV last year, on the First Sunday of Advent, light the First Candle, and then follow up the lighting of that candle by singing “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” That was stupid. Advent says, “Someone is coming!” not “Someone has arrived!” “O Come, All Ye Faithful” says, “Yea, Lord, we greet thee, born this happy morning.” Singing that on the First Sunday of Advent is like singing “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” on Easter Sunday. Just doesn’t fit. Save the Christmas carols in church for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the Twelve Days of Christmas (they’re not just a song!). Sure, go caroling in your neighborhood and to the nursing homes before Christmas, but in church, give the Church Year its due.
- Pre-Thanksgiving Christmas-ing - No, there’s nothing sacred about Thanksgiving being a boundary marker for the beginning of the “Christmas season.” Macy’s invented that. The day after Thanksgiving has no significance on the Christian Calendar. The day after Thanksgiving is not the beginning of the “Christmas season.” Christmas Eve (at sundown) is the beginning of the Christmas season (a season which does not end until January 5 or 6 (depending on how you look at it: see below). December 26 is not the “day after Christmas”: it’s the Second Day of Christmas). Still, as Thanksgiving is usually close to the First Sunday of Advent, it can and does serve as a boundary marker of good taste. Santa arriving at the Mall on Veteran’s Day is just tacky. Radio stations playing Christmas music before Thanksgiving is just tacky. Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday: why run all over it just like we’ve run all over the Advent season?
- Premature De-Yule-izaton - That’s the phenomenon of suddenly stopping the celebration of Christmas at 12:01 a.m. on December 26. Those people who tell you on the 26th, “Christmas is over,” suffer from this condition. So do the ones who think it’s “bad luck” to leave the tree up after New Year’s Day. New Year’s Day has nothing to do with the timing of Christmas. The day called “New Year’s Day” on the civil calendar is The Eighth Day of Christmas on the Church Calendar (a day also called The Holy Name of Jesus, as he was given the name “Jesus” on the Eighth Day of his life). January 1st is just Day Eight of a Twelve-day Feast. Why should the Christmas decorations come down when Christmas is still going on? Don’t stop celebrating Christmas before Christmas is really over! Read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol again. No, don’t just watch the movie. Read it. The Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge on a tour of the whole Christmas season, through a children’s Twelfth Night party! That’s why he’s so surprised when he wakes up and it’s Christmas day. That’s why he says “the spirits have done it all in one night!” Because he’s just experienced the entire Twelve Days of Christmas! Don’t stop Christmas before Christmas is supposed to stop.
- The “War on Christmas”/”Keep Christ in Christmas” Hubbub - The season that talk-radio pundits and Fundamentalist radio preachers want us to “keep Christ in” is not Christmas and never has been Christmas: it’s the “holiday shopping season” that Macy’s and the other retailers dreamed up. Christians have never had trouble keeping Christ in Christmas (the real Christmas, that is). It’s the clueless ones who try to put Christmas into that which is not Christmas who have the problem. How about “putting the adventure back in Advent”? How about “putting the thanks back in Thanksgiving? How about “putting the hallow back in Halloween” and leave Christmas in the real Christmas season? If Don Wildmon’s “American Family Radio” really wanted us to have a Christian Christmas, they would keep playing Christmas music until Epiphany. But they stop on the 25th of December, just when the real Christmas is starting. So who’s really declaring war on Christmas?
See, here’s the deal: Christmas is a holy day on the Christian church’s liturgical calendar. That’s just what it is. Christmas, as a holy day on the Church’s liturgical calendar, is December 25. The Christmas Season is a season of the church’s liturgical calendar, along with Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, etc. The season of Christmas on the church’s liturgical calendar is from sundown on Christmas Eve through January 5. Sundown on January 5, or “Twelfth Night,” begins the celebration of Epiphany (January 6). The day after Thanksgiving doesn’t mark anything in particular on the liturgical calendar. The First Sunday of Advent, however, does mark something very signigicant on the liturgical calendar: the beginning of a new Church Year, and the celebration of the Second Advent of Christ, a celebration that is distinct from Christmas.
(Part of this, I know, is because I don’t like my seasons to overlap, just like I don’t like my food to intermingle. I don’t want the liquid from my turnip greens to get in my fruit salad. I don’t like fall basketball or summer football. And I don’t like Christmas on Halloween.)
Have a blessed Advent season. And an equally blessed Christmas season.
Just not at the same time. 
P.S. No carols for you!!!!! (JK)
13 responses so far ↓
1 Cap'n Whook // Nov 19, 2008 at 13:25
You mean you don’t play Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” on Black Friday? ‘N Sync’s album “Home for Christmas,” as well?
I know someone who always calls them “End Stink,” but I digress. http://www.amazon.com/Home-Christmas-NSYNC/dp/B00000DALT
Premature De-Yule-izaton. For years, the local TV newspersons would start announcing ON CHRISTMAS DAY that one should drop-off discarded Christmas Trees at Bruno’s Grocery Store parking lots to be used for fish habitat in Smith Lake. (The lake is full of trees now, so they don’t want ‘em anymore.) Some people think you get a partridge on Dec. 13!
At Christmas parties and family gatherings, I play a selection or two of “Standard Piano Literature” before the carol sing-along starts, so forgive me if I have to start practicing my Bach/Scarlatti/Haydn/Mozart offering(s) in early November with the carol brush-up colliding with Advent!
Love the “War on Christmas” lecture. Couldn’t agree more!
2 cancerman // Nov 19, 2008 at 16:35
Can you explain why liturgical churches deck out in purple for college bowl season?
3 RevJATB // Nov 19, 2008 at 20:36
Well it has absolutely nothing to do with LSU, obviously.
4 Ed Eubanks // Nov 20, 2008 at 10:06
Well, actually– it IS the “holiday season” since, a) the word “holiday” is an Englishification of “Holy Day” and the periods of Advent, Christmastide, and Epiphany are certainly Holy Days; and b) between Thanksgiving (which, as you acknowledge, IS worth noting in the church), the Advent season, Christmastide, the secular New Year, and Epiphany, it is simply inaccurate to refer to only one of these when we actually mean the whole epoch of late November thru early January.
But I agree with much of the rest. Although I DO listen to my “Holiday” playlist (yes, iTunes actually has a “Holiday” playlist at the Eubanks house) throughout– it actually was synced onto various i-devices a week ago. I don’t think it is out of accord with the spirit of anticipation.
As for hymnody, I’ve been working to introduce more of the true Advent hymns since last year, and have found a couple of gems to introduce this year (do you know “Come Thou Savior of Our Race” to the tune HENDON? I can send you a PDF…). But again, I don’t think it is wholly inappropriate to add some of the more anticipatorily-inclined carols before the actual day.
One dilemma of it is this: there is such a wealth of great hymnody that is specifically Christmastide-themed. It is nearly impossible to get our fill of it simply during the 12 days. So I start with the pure Advent hymns, continue them, and meanwhile gradually add in some Christmas carols as well.
For example: Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming on the second Sunday in Advent; Angels from the Realms of Glory and Break Forth O Beauteous Heav’nly Light (and, yes, Joy to the World) on the third Sunday in Advent; etc.
5 Mo // Nov 20, 2008 at 11:02
Can da boy riff, or can da boy riff?
I appreciate the cogent explanations … but some of us swim in a part of the pond in which such rigid adherence to the liturgical calendar isn’t possible. I DO select the hymns carefully so that we’re not as explicit about Christ having come until deeper into the season. “Joy to the World” is really more about the second advent rather than the first (or so it seems to me).
Great riff, man. Ranted with gusto!
6 RevJATB // Nov 20, 2008 at 13:42
I often “cheat” as well and use “Lo How a Rose” on the third Sunday of Advent, since we light a rose-colored candle on that day. Morris is exactly right: “Joy to the World” IS an Advent hymn, not a Christmas one. (The Trinity Hymnal actually puts it in the Advent section rather than the Christmas section.) But I’ve found it rather pointless to try to use it as an Advent hymn, since everyone associates it so strongly with Christmas.
You’re right about the limited amount of time available to sing Christmas music (especially as contrasted with the 50 Days of Easter, when we are sometimes scrounging for more Easter hymns!). In a larger church there are more opportunities because of Lessons & Carols, Christmas Eve AND Christmas Day services, children’s Christmas pageants, handbell choir concerts, etc., etc., etc. In a small church such as ours (Ed’s and mine), Sunday morning service is about all we have. For that reason, people at our church will no doubt find me “cheating,” especially on the 21st (the last Sunday service we’ll have before Christmas).
Ed, please send me that hymn. I would also recommend to you “The Advent of Our God” to ST. THOMAS.
7 Scott // Nov 23, 2008 at 18:44
Just a question…where in the Bible does it say to celebrate Christmas, Advent, or any other church added “season”? Great post…point well-taken, but Christians should remember that our lives should be about Him…not a season that we try to keep Him in, overlapping or not…
8 RevJATB // Nov 23, 2008 at 19:48
Hi Scott, and welcome.
By the way you’ve asked your question, I assume that you may subscribe to the Puritan understanding of the “regulative principle of worship,” which is sometimes summarized as “whatever is not commanded is forbidden.” I don’t know if you do or not, but that is my assumption. I also know that my summary of that view is not a complete one, but it may help to clue in other readers who are not familiar with that position.
A comments section like this doesn’t permit me to go into the reasons why I disagree with that particular version of the regulative principle. Suffice it to say that I believe we formulate a theology of worship the way we formulate a theology of anything else (the atonement, just war theory, what have you): we take everything the Bible has to say on the subject and bring it together systematically.
There are many things we regularly do in worship that are not expressly commanded in Scripture, such as a weekly collection and a weekly sermon. Yes, the Bible gives us the example of Paul preaching on the Lord’s Day (in the book of Acts) and the Bible does command us to “preach the word,” but it does not command us to have a sermon every Sunday.
Instead, I believe we formulate a theology of worship based on biblical commands, biblical principles and biblical examples. In the Old Testament, God gave his people the annual feasts (Passover, Feast of Tabernacles, Feast of Weeks, etc.). In so doing, he established the principle that his people were to order their times and seasons not simply according to the changing of the seasons or the harvests, but according to his mighty acts in history, his acts of salvation on their behalf.
The Christian Year is simply an outgrowth of that principle: the earliest Christians took Passover (in Greek, Pascha) and interpreted it in light of Christ’s Resurrection. The day we call Easter is still called Pascha (Passover) by the Greeks, Pasqua by the Italians, etc.
I believe in celebrating the Church Year because our faith is not a timeless mythology: it is firmly rooted in history. Therefore, I believe it is helpful and wise to revisit the major events of Redemptive History at the same time each year for the same reason we celebrate loved ones’ birthdays, our wedding anniversaries, and even Independence Day: because something significant happened on those dates.
That is not to say that we know what day Jesus was born: of course we don’t. But the practice of celebrating his birth on the same day every year helps to cement the event in our minds as a real, historical event.
As I have mentioned in other posts (you can check the archives for earlier posts on the Christian Year), I have great respect for those who, because of their Puritan/Reformed convictions, do not celebrate the Church Year in any form or fashion: no Christmas, no Easter, etc. Just the Lord’s Day. I don’t agree with them, but I respect them.
What I have no respect for, and little patience for, are those people who decide to celebrate the feasts of the Christian Calendar but who then take their cues as to how and when to celebrate from retailers, florists, and greeting card companies rather than from centuries of Christian witness and experience. In other words, what’s the point, as a Christian, in celebrating Christmas if you’re just going to do what the retailers dictate? It would seem better to me to omit Christmas altogether than to celebrate it in such a way that completely ignores the way the church has celebrated Christmas for centuries.
Finally (and I said I wasn’t going to get into this, didn’t I? Hehehe), it is ironic to me that so many churches will eschew the Church Year (except for Christmas and Easter as stand-alone days, not in their logical contexts as part of the larger story), but they WILL observe civil holidays such as Independence Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, etc., as well as florist-invented “holidays” such as Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Grandparent’s Day. So, “man-made” days honoring Christ are out, but “man-made” days honoring America, baseball, hot dogs, or mom’s apple pie, are in? Doesn’t make sense to me.
9 Scott // Nov 24, 2008 at 7:18
Well- stated, John. I do not subscribe to that principle; my point, as you stated, is that almost everything we do as the Church is not specifically stated in the Word, but for some reason we hold on to them as if God Himself did speak them into existence right after the resurrection. Perhaps in the canonization we did miss the “book of Liturgical Practices”
Most, if not all, of our theologies, liturgical practices, and life-styles should be questioned and brought before God and checked by the Word to see if it has merit at all before we blindly follow them and they become meaningless symbols that conform to this world. Every Christmas season I struggle with the whole meaning and ask myself should we even go through with the tradition as it somehow becomes about greed and parties. Inevitably that brings up the whole “keep Christ in Christmas” issue and I have to wonder if Christ was ever there…in Christmas the holiday, that is.
As Christ-followers the whole point is to live life as a Christ-honoring life, not pick out a specific day or days. I do not believe there is anything wrong with Christmas, but we tend to focus on the day, not the reason for the day, we are human. The Israelites did the same thing with the ark, it became the object of their affection and a good-luck charm to take into battle instead of what it was intended for…the place where the presence of God rested. And so we do with everything else… Advent, Christmas, Easter, church practices, offerings, church buildings, etc.
I will celebrate Christmas this year and thank God that He chose to set aside His place and come as man to live a life on this Earth fully intending to follow the Father’s will and die in order to ransom me from certain death, only to be buried and rise again. I will tell my family the rest of the story from the manger to the open tomb, and be reminded that it’s not so important that we honor the birth of Jesus (while we give presents to one another) as we honor his name…the name we take upon believing in Him, and we live the Life, so we do not take on His name in vain
10 Mo // Nov 24, 2008 at 8:50
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how healthy Christian dialogue takes place. To quote Rick Warren: “We are never persuasive when we’re abrasive.” Kudos to both of you for gracious, intelligent, non-belligerent discourse. I sense the Spirit of Christ in both of you. Well done! Well done indeed! With your permission, may I link this one on my blog?
Mo.
11 RevJATB // Nov 24, 2008 at 8:59
Absolutely, Morris.
12 Mo // Nov 24, 2008 at 18:42
Thanks. And don’t get me started on year-round Christmas stores … yeeeesh!
13 Cap'n Whook // Nov 24, 2008 at 20:43
Well, now, those year-round stores that sell German Christmas goods, handmade by Black Forest elves, are an exception.
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