Christmas needs Advent. Without Advent, Christmas is likely misunderstood, distorted, or seriously abused. Christmas is powerful, and it rightly draws attention. Yet the attention may skew its meaning. What can we say? Christmas has been sentimentalized, commercialized, and re-purposed as entertainment. Even in the Church, it is made cute by children dressed as angels and sheep; made pressured by extra programs; and made beautiful in decor, music, and ambience. However, without the lens of Advent, its truth and its offense are possibly obscured.
Advent gives Christmas a past and a future. It rescues Christmas from the loneliness of being a snapshot and sets it in a landscape of God’s miraculous plan and purpose. Rather than an annual bubble in the calendar, Advent connects Christmas to creation, the fall, the covenants, redemption, and to the glory to come in the new creation.
Zach Williams can sing the delightful, “I Don’t Want Christmas to End,” but Advent reveals Christmas as a strategic and pregnant moment in a long redemptive plan, a place in a journey and not a destination. Between the first creation and the new creation, Christmas is essential, but it does not exist in a vacuum. The meaning of Christmas is discovered in its association with Advent. Christmas ends, but its impact continues.
In spite of the perception many churches give, Christmas does not conclude Advent. Christmas Day is the first day of a new season, not the last day of an Advent season. Isaiah 2:1-5, Matthew 24:36-44, and Romans 13:11-14 are read three Sundays before reading Matthew 1:18-25. Similarly, Isaiah 11:1-10 is read with Matthew 3:1-12 and Romans 15:4-13 three weeks before Luke 2:1-20. The sequence of passages remind us that Christmas stands between a past and future.
I love It’s a Wonderful Life, and I am happy Clarence got his wings. Home Alone 1,2,3 ∞, Elf, andThe Grinch are entertaining. How great it is when the General gets his White Christmas! What is The Miracle on 34thStreet, the vindication of Kris, a house for Susan, or the romance of Doris? Speaking of romance, Hallmark has interpreted Christmas mystery and miracles as romantic fulfillment.
Such is the outcome of Christmas without Advent. Without Advent, Christmas occupies great attention, but it is made quite small. The culture usurps Christmas, expels the Child, avoids the demands, and fabricates a sentimental and sweet God, if God shows up at all. Yet we know the true Christmas is demanding and costly. Ask Joseph; ask Mary; ask the mothers weeping in Bethlehem; ask Jesus.
We need Advent to remind us that Christmas is not a “stand alone” gesture of God’s affection toward us. Christmas is a necessary and dangerous incursion into a fallen world in which rebels dispute God’s authority and take the life of the true King. Christmas is not a sweet season seeking to boost family harmony, romance, or self-improvement. Christmas is a strategic moment in God’s plan to create a society in which wolves dwell with lambs and lions eat straw with oxen. Christmas hates sin and humbles sinners, demands holiness and redeems all who by faith surrender to a baby become a man hung upon a cross, buried in a tomb, risen from the dead, who will come again in glory. Only then do we understand this Silent Night as a holy night with peace on earth, good will to men.
Advent exposes sin, promises justice in judgement, reveals the King’s authority, describes and prescribes our blessed future. In that context, Christmas amazes us with the lengths to which the Father will go to give the Son that the world should not perish but have eternal life.
Advent reminds us that faith is more than adoring the Baby. Faith surrenders to the King of kings and Lord of Lords. Faith lays down rebellion and ceases disputing the Lordship and the glory of the Coming One. Faith submits to his reign and surrenders to his judgements.
Christmas needs Advent. May you keep a holy Advent in God’s blessing, and may God grant you a celebration of Christmas that matches the wonder of His great Gift and the hope of the new creation.
Rev. David Banks
Conference Superintendent