Is Advent the solution the church needs?

Every year it seems as if the Christmas season becomes less sacred and more secular even among Christians with the increasing focus on the counterproductive culture wars. Instead what if more Christians and Churches focused on Advent as the central focus of the season? Then again chances are most American Christians unless they are Eastern Orthodox, most likely have an oversimplified and distorted view of Advent as a mere church countdown to Christmas, like I did up until a few days ago. At its core Advent serves a duel reflection purposes not only commemorating the First Coming of Jesus Christ but also preparing for His Second Coming. Originally Advent or Nativity Fast as it is called in the Eastern Orthodox Church was a period of fasting that was equally strict as Lent and thus was sometimes referred to as “Winter Lent”. It was only after the Protestant Reformation in the Western Church when it was relaxed first by the Protestant Churches and then by the Catholic Church to the point that it easily gets lost in the secular commercial aspect of the season. Imagine what it would be like if enough churches were to restore Advent to its original status or at least preach a sermon about it. Could a restored Advent be the key that the Church needs to restore Jesus Christ as the center of CHRIST-mass once again?

Commercialization of Christmas

It seems that every year there are complaints about how commercialized Christmas has become at the expense of the spiritual. The traditional mottoes such as “Jesus is the reason for the season” and “Without Christ there would be no CHRISTmas” seem to surface each year but don’t seem to make much of a difference beyond maybe getting non Christians pissed off at those “Evangelicals and Fundamentalists” for trying to push their religion on people against their will. This year once again is no exception but I must commend the creativity of the Buy Nothing Christmas imitative. Their site contains a lot of interesting materials to say the least but beyond that I don’t know what to fully make of it. My initial reaction to the site was that they were also missing the point by shifting the “buy buy buy” focus to “buy nothing, buy nothing, buy nothing” instead of focusing on Christ. Yet at the same time for some this buy nothing focus might be the right application for a more Christ focused Christmas. Still I must admit that I could never understand the whole going into credit card debt to buy more Christmas gifts for others than you can afford. Personally I tend to be fairly cheap in terms of money when it comes to giving gifts to others but instead spend time to make things like photo collages for others which I normally give in dollar store picture frames, which fits into the alternative gifts category that the Buy Nothing Christmas people are pushing.

How much is Christmas Missing the Point?

This year I am really starting to despise a good number of Christmas carols that keep on popping up all over the place. I guess it doesn’t help that pretty much all of the radio stations in my area going to all Christmas music 100% of the time, and that a few of jumped on the bandwagon before Thanksgiving. There is only so much of these secular carols about Frosty the Snowman, Santa Clause and Reindeer and not to mention “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause” and “Grandma Got Ran Over by a Reindeer” which seem to become more annoying each time they are on, that I can take before they start feelings of anger and rage in me at how the pivotal event in human history when Yahweh walked among His creation to undo the effects of the Fall, yet it has been hijacked as a commercial holiday attempting to take the Christ out of CHRISTmas. It reminds me of Dr. Petter’s (one of my seminary professors) comment yesterday when talking about God’s mission in Genesis and how it relates to the Christmas season which is a lot more than the winter wonderland celebration that it seems to have become in practice for the most part. Still I can handle the “winter wonderland” carols when a few are mixed in with traditional Christian Christmas carols/hymns as within that context they become in my opinion a celebration of God’s creation during this part of the year and the emphasis of the love, joy and peace as godly values to live under. Its just when they are taken out of this context that they start to cause problems for me.