A few years back, Stanley Grenz wrote an article that appeared in Christianity Today entitled “Drive Through Christmas.” Here is an adaption of what he wrote:
“On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me." Tony Bennett's voice wove its subtle magic throughout the shopping mall. How appropriate, I thought, as I watched the shoppers scurry from store to store. The advertisements promised "just the right gifts at just the right price," allowing us to "give like Santa and save like Scrooge."
As I listened, I was struck with how we have turned Christmas around—not so much by commercializing the season, but through something deeper. Our McWorld of drive-through expectations has replaced patient waiting, followed by heartfelt joyous celebration, with the idolatry of instant gratification.
As members of the fast-food generation, we have become so eager to get to Christmas that we bypass Advent. Whereas an earlier generation encouraged fasting and reflection, we try to enjoy days filled with more Christmas festivities than we can endure. Christmas has displaced Advent on our calendars.
But our bypassing of Advent runs deeper—altering our attitude to the story of Christ's birth. We know how the story ends. Knowing the end of the story so well, we want to rush through the long and tortuous details of how God prepared a people—of how "God sent his Son…when the time had fully come" (Galatians 4:4). Rather than entering into the sense of expectation lying at the foundation of the story of Christ's entrance into human history, we read only the story's glorious climax. Rather than savoring the plaintive mood of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," we immediately want to hear a robust version of "Joy to the World, the Lord Is Come." In short, we have our Christmas early and create a drive-through Christmas."
What Grenz is lamenting is the reality that for many people there is no time or room for Advent, those four weeks preceding Christmas. It gets in the way. Like kids who just want to get to the dessert, we want Christmas.
But Advent is important. That is why the church for centuries has been observing it. With its emphasis on expectation and hope, peace and joy and the need for and discovery of real love, Advent helps prepare us for Christmas. It helps get us ready to fully appreciate and celebrate the real significance of Christmas and to see it in the grand scope of God’s plan for the universe.
In our home, for decades we have lit an Advent wreath. Each day of the four weeks, beginning with the fourth Sunday before Christmas, we pause in the evening to light the appropriate candle for the week (Hope/Expectation, Peace, Joy, and Love), read a passage of Scripture and a brief meditation on the passage in the light of that week’s theme, and pray. For me, this practice sanctifies time and reminds us that Christmas is more than decorations, parties, hectic shopping and gift giving. It is a time to rest and allow the profound truth that God, the Sovereign God of the universe, because of love, enters into the drama of our human lives and history in the person of Jesus. God comes as a vulnerable baby, dependent on others.
Advent helps me to see that in a world so often devoid of hope, peace, joy and love, that God comes to give us these gifts. Yes, Christmas carols and songs and some of the trimmings of Christmas can remind us of this truth. But spending four weeks reflecting and preparing for the celebration of Christmas can allow us to enter more deeply into the profound joy of the season.
As I write this we are already into the third week of Advent. In those three weeks, Connie and I have enjoyed the opportunity to pause, ponder and prepare. Advent reminds us, through its readings and emphasis on hope, peace, joy and love that no matter how much the culture around us wants to redefine these words through its hype and suggestions that these things come in neatly wrapped boxes from department stores, real love, joy, peace and hope are only found in opening ourselves up to the gift of relationship that God gives us in Christ.
So, let me encourage you to not “bypass Advent.” Savor it. Enjoy the four weeks leading up to the celebration of Jesus’ coming. Let this time bathe your soul and help you to really enter into the joy of the celebration of God’s greatest gift. Happy Advent!!
