Second Week of Advent: Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Second Week of Advent: Wednesday, December 11, 2024

We call the time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day the Christmas Season because Christmas is the highlight that all of our preparations build toward. As the Christmas tree goes up, the lights are strung, the wreaths are hung, the Christmas music is heard and sung, our anticipation for the “big day” builds and builds and builds. Then BANG! It’s here!

To be honest, Christmas Day itself often feels rather disappointing. The kids get us up too early. The gifts are unwrapped in a flurry, and the rest of the day is all about the food and getting together with family. Then it’s over. We leave the decorations up through New Year’s (maybe) and then they all go back in their boxes until next year. The problem isn’t with Christmas itself, of course, but rather that it’s short, and over too soon. There are 12 days of Christmas, of course, but hardly anyone observes them anymore. Cultural Christmas is a month of big build-up and a too-short conclusion.

But did you know that as a Christian it doesn’t have to be that way? You stand in a long, long line of people who have believed in Jesus throughout history, and you are the beneficiary of millennia of traditions that, while not part of the essence of the Christmas holiday, certainly enhance its true meaning. Millions of Christians before you and millions after you have and will use these traditions to observe the spiritual reality at the heart of the holiday.

Wreaths, Christmas trees, candles, and gifts; all of these are part of the spiritual tradition of observing Christmas. They’ve been co-opted and commercialized, but they still flow from Christian customs developed to celebrate the birth of Christ.

Through the ages the days leading up to Christmas Day have themselves taken on a unique religious meaning. To prepare for the celebration of Christ’s first coming, and to help keep our eyes on His promise to return, a “season” of spiritual preparation grew. We know it as Advent (literally meaning “coming”). The Advent wreath, the Jesse Tree, the Advent Calendar – all of them grew as traditions to help us mark the approaching time of celebration, Christmas but also Christ’s Return. These ways of marking time have their own unique take on Advent, but all are centered on devotions and prayers. That’s how we prepare for Christmas.

And Christmas itself became a celebration too big to confine to just one day. To mark the time when Christ’s birth was revealed to the Jewish Shepherds and the Gentile Magi (Wisemen) the church developed the 12 days of Christmas to stretch the celebration out.

So, as a Christian the Christmas season can be much more than just a big buildup with a sputtering bang. It can be five weeks of spiritual growth ending in a prolonged spiritual celebration.

The Grinch thought that he could stop Christmas from coming because he thought it was just a one-day thing. He discovered that things aren’t what makes Christmas Christmas. As a Christian you can draw on the traditions used by millions of your forefathers (and foremothers) to celebrate Christmas as an entire little season. May the Good Lord bless you as you do so!

Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me to use this December to learn more about traditions that Christians have used to observe Christmas as a holiday. More importantly, help me to use the month to draw closer to you by trying out one or more of these traditions. Amen.