Yesterday I listened to the CD I always take out in December, Christmas with the Cambridge Singers, with the City of London Sinfonia under the direction of John Rutter. Its 21 tracks begin with Joy to the World and end with Silent Night. Christmas music all. I’ll listen to it daily from now till Christmas.
The liturgical calendar tells me I shouldn’t celebrate Christmas until, well, Christmas, which I should then observe for 12 days, through January 5th. Now, I am told, is Advent, a time of waiting, holy longing and repentance.
But my observance of Advent is lukewarm at best. The only Advent song I like is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel – it doesn’t appear on the Cambridge Singers CD, but it is featured on another Christmas CD, Peace on Earth by Casting Crowns (which has a haunting version of I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day).
All of which is to say I don’t know what to do with Advent. My church tells me to observe Advent now and celebrate Christmas later, but my culture has taught me to celebrate Christmas now… in the days leading up to Christmas. My church wants me to be counter-cultural in observing Advent, but that seems a weak argument since Christmas itself was established as a cultural compromise when the church chose the pagan festival of Saturnalia as the time of year to celebrate the birth of Christ.
So I will observe Advent this year in a half-hearted way, all the while secretly celebrating Christmas…. stealth rebel that I am. And when December 26th comes, I will put the Cambridge Singers away and move on to other things.
I just wanted to let you know that I have been thinking about your entry here since the day you posted it.
My observation of Advent is much like yours. This year, I actually began ahead of schedule in September, meditating on scriptures in some way linked with the coming of Christ and listening too and meditating on the words of the great choral works similarly linked.
I bought my wife Wangerin’s book on Advent and the twelve days of Christmas. I am reading it too, of course.
Knowing the outcome of the waiting it is hard to not feel the joy of the outcome. Such joy, I think, is a stimulus for repentance. Who would not want to turn away from all that separates from it and turn toward the one who brings it?
Thinking about time and the new year that lies ahead, I also bought a weekly planner calendar – Pomegranate’s ecological one. It can be seen as part of a pagan revival, I guess, but it also can be seen as an expression of Psalm 104, in the psalm’s vision of the kingdom to come found in the Eden we already have.
I bought a Sierra Club weekly calendar for 2010… it just arrived yesterday. In the past, I’ve used more utilitarian, churchy calendars, but this coming year I wanted something different. Each week has a lovely picture from nature to feed my spirit.
On another note: if I was too heavy-handed on the gospel reliability thing, please forgive me. There certainly is a diversity of opinion on this, and meditating on scripture, as you do, is an excellent practice.
Peace to you.
I imagine your calendar is quite beautiful.
I don’t remember anything about a gospel reliability thing, so I guess you must have not been heavy handed.
I should say, I don’t remember any conflicting positions about the gospel reliability posting, if that is what you were thinking about.