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Tasmanian Anglican

December 2004

 

Being deliberate about the Advent season

by Hedley Beare

 

 

There are two Christmases in operation in Australia.

The first is a cultural event involving families and children, the giving of gifts, an orgy of buying and selling, end-of-year parties, the climax of the business year, 'school break-up' after a spate of assessments and final examinations, shops decked with bunting and decorations, red-suited people parading as Santa Claus, and the nativity stories told like childhood fairy stories. The cultural festival is a time for the community to pause and be happy, a by-no-means trivial convention in a world wracked with apprehension and negativity.

The second Christmas belongs to the Christian faith community, the Feast-day of Christ being a focal-point in the church calendar. There has been a lot of talk recently about re-claiming Christmas, with slogans like 'Put Christ Back Into Christmas' and 'Jesus is the reason for the season,' but by and large they address the wrong audience, the world outside of churches, as though we are trying to get the attention of an unwilling audience. For Christian people, there is no need for a reclamation since they have not lost sight of the original.

Yet many Christians regret that they get caught up in the whirl of the cultural Christmas and their time to celebrate the religious significance has to jostle for air-space. We do not want to opt out of the cultural festivities but we do need a means to keep the Advent message fresh and vibrant alongside those social events.

It is an ancient problem which the church has addressed. Some people are surprised to find that traditionally the Christmas season, like Lent, is forty days and forty nights in length, beginning four weeks before Christmas (Advent Sunday is the last in November) and ending with the Feast of the Epiphany on 6 January, twelve days after the Christ-Mass, and the day on which is celebrated the arrival of the 'Wise Men from the East' to worship the newly born child.

The faith community wants to explain and celebrate the Christmas event in ways that are credible, authentic, and relevant to the present; and in this respect it is helped by two millennia of thought and practice, and especially by recent scholarship concerning the biblical texts and the birth narratives themselves.

Interestingly, in the past three years, there have been signs of a new seriousness about the relevance of Christmas. A contributing factor has been insecurity, the realisation that terrorism can strike close to home, as with the attack on 11 September 2001, and the Bali nightclub and Indonesian embassy and hotel bombings. What have we done, people have been asking, to provoke such hatred and anger from some sections of the world community? Recent elections at home and overseas have also shown how much we are driven by self-interest, racism and bigotry, and how we need the kind of leadership which can cultivate real goodwill in the world.

For these reasons, Caroline Chisholm asked three years ago (Courier Mail, 21/12/01, p.12), 'Can churches capitalise on this interest?' It is not the message that is the problem, she said, but that churches couch it in a pre-1960s, rule-based worldview that embodies 'essentially 1950s American family values'. The 21st Century society is in the process of deciding whether (and if so, how) they will celebrate traditional holidays (holy days); they have embraced Anzac Day, are sceptical about Easter (and the resurrection), and have by and large desacralized Christmas.

So there is value in having a device to focus our attention, to deepen our appreciation, and to express authentically the meanings of what Christmas is about - in short, in having a devotional discipline for the Advent season. To help that process, let me put forward eight propositions:

  • The figure of Santa now so badly corrupts the legend of St Nicholas of Myra that Santa can be quietly dropped from our own and from church celebrations. Santa and the Easter Bunny perpetuate the fiction about elves and fairies who turn up at night and mysteriously leave presents. See the tradition for what it is - unbelievable, obsolete, residual, medieval magic.
  • The birth narratives are stories carrying meanings. Their differences are not necessarily reconcilable, they were late additions to the gospels, and their historicity has been questioned. Even so, they indicate - using first-century symbolism - who Jesus was.
  • Like Lent, Advent is a festival of forty days and forty nights. Let us reinstate the full Advent celebration, including the 'twelve days of Christmas' after 25 December.
  • Christmas gift-giving models God's grace. We give in spite of (and not because of) whether the recipient has been good or bad. It is an un-Christian fiction that receiving gifts is conditional on whether we deserve them. Let us also be wary lest gift-giving and gift-receiving foster greed, acquisitiveness, and indifference to others. Ideas like the TEAR Fund's suggestions on 'really useful gifts' are worthy of our support.
  • Modern translations make better sense of the phrase, 'Peace on earth, goodwill to men'. Shalom (peace) encompasses meanings like fulfilment, harmony, well-being, wholesomeness, acceptance, salvation; and it can come on earth only to those who are in step with divinity, with the earth's rhythms, with a genuine concern for others, including creatures other than human. It concerns the alignment of our life intentions, personally and collectively.
  • Jesus is the pivot of all the Advent celebrations. The love, well-being and wholesomeness of the Jesus-coming are what give focus, meaning and depth to all the gift-buying, lunches, card-sending, holidaying, year-ending, friend-and-family honouring (enjoyable and festive as they may be).
  • A day-by-day devotional routine such as we normally associate with Lent gives balance to the heightened activity surrounding Christmas and the added demands put on our time and energy. Among other things, it is wise to use a daily lectionary and to keep a daily journal.
  • The six weeks in the Advent season each has a traditional theme and leading motif, which collectively give continuity to the Christmas season and what it means. Expect quite seriously that the season will build up so that by its climax you will literally experience your own epiphany.

Hedley Beare is Professor Emeritus of Education, University of Melbourne, and an Anglican layperson. Article reprinted from TMA November 2004, with kind permission.