Pastor's Corner: Christmas is not here yet

It’s not the Christmas season.

Liturgically speaking, anyway.

For much of the Western Christian tradition, the beginning of December marked the beginning of the season of Advent.

As my “high church” minded friends are inclined to remind with meme after meme this time of year, Christmas doesn’t begin until Dec. 25 and “Christmas season” continues on until Jan. 6.

Now, admittedly, being “LC” (liturgically correct) will drive some bonkers. While I question the validity of a “War on Christmas,” I feel like I have witnessed an increasingly spirited “War About Christmas” in the circles I travel in. I’ve picked up on what is widely sensed as an earlier and earlier “Christmas creep” in the retail world (e.g. before Labor Day … tucked in the back corner by the bicycle and automotive aisles and expanding out larger as each week passes). I’m yet to meet anyone happy about that.

But then the divisions become evident. There are those who want to sing Christmas songs and will gleefully break out their 1994 Mariah Carey album in October. There are others who grimace if they hear “Jingle Bell Rock” on the radio prior to either Thanksgiving or Dec. 1, depending on the degree of “Christmas season” purity. Some will decorate a tree in early to mid-November and others want their houses fir-free until the calendar turns.

Opinions in either direction appear to be held increasingly strongly.

At my house, I suppose we have permitted a moderate amount of Christmas creep. It used to be no decorations until December until a few years ago. Decorating became a way to keep kids entertained so I can avoid chasing anyone while my belly is overstuffed, quite honestly.

Though we are yet to put up a tree this year. We are waiting on the Big Sandy High School FFA sale to purchase a pine.

Seminary study gave me my first experience of Advent in a community of serious devotees and I did establish some zeal of the recent convert for a few years. I tried to avoid Christmas carols where the Christ child is already arrived (“Hark, the Herald Angels Sing!” for example) in favor of Advent hymns that await the Messiah’s coming (“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”) from the first of the last four Sundays before Dec. 24 until that night’s Christmas Eve services. All with the associated proper “tsk, tsk” for those who refuse to do the same.

It’s a sometimes exhausting and often losing battle. I have learned that when you do give in, sometimes residents of senior living facilities can be as giddy as students of pre-kindergarten education centers about belting out a familiar tune like “Away in a Manger” weeks in advance of the prescribed celebration date of Christ in the manger.

Yet I do believe in some degree of holding a line about Advent not being one and the same as Christmas time. In a hurried world that can be sent into overdrive in the name of that annual economic boost, there is value in the slower-tempoed “getting ready” for the Nativity.

The word Advent has a Latin root meaning “coming” or “arrival.” It is hoped that our worship and devotions in this season can be a tool for centering our lives in and around the one who is to come. Not the aunt who has pinched your cheeks since toddlerhood or the in-laws whose visit maybe makes us nervous. But Christ, the child born in Bethlehem and who is promised to come again to judge the living and the dead. Who makes all things new and upholds justice for the meek of the earth.

It’s not Christmas yet. But sing, if that helps prepare your heart. Give, if your holiday joy compels you to share your first fruits. And above all, love, for when Jesus comes, he will know his disciples by this same love.

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The Rev. Sean Janssen is pastor of Messiah Lutheran Church, Havre, and Christ Lutheran Church, Big Sandy