THERE'S NO DOUBT that we live in a consumer culture. Look around. Every year Christmas decorations go up a little earlier than the year before. It used to be that “Black Friday,” the day after Thanksgiving, was the day business relied upon to get them “in the black for the year.” Yet they’ve wised up. If they move the sales up even before Halloween there is more money to be made.

Further, it’s no secret that Christmas has been co-opted into the generic, “Holiday Season.” Cultural Conservatives annually update their lists of stores and corporations that do not say “Merry Christmas” but “Seasons Greetings,” in order to decry the ever-nebulous “secularization” of America.

As Christians, sadly, we are no more immune from this “spirit of the age” than anyone else.
This is why our congregation has followed the traditional practice of celebrating the Christian season of Advent. Advent, from the Latin word adventus, means, arrival, or, coming. These are the four Lord’s Days prior to Christmas in which the Church celebrates the mystery of the Lord’s coming into the world.

Historical Origins
Unlike Easter, scholars have not been able to determine with any degree of certainty when Advent began in the Church. Since the Christian feast day of Christmas, or, the Nativity of Our Lord, has no evidence before the end of the fourth century, it is of late origin.

The earliest evidence of a period of preparation for Christmas in the western Church is from the Synod of Saragossa in 380, whose fourth canon prescribes that from the seventeenth of December to the feast of the Epiphany no one should be permitted to absent himself from church. The collection of homilies of St. Gregory the Great (590–604) begins with a sermon for the second Sunday of Advent. In the Eastern, Greek-speaking Church, we find no documents for the observance of Advent earlier than the eighth century.

Not Holy but Helpful
It is important for us to remember that these Sundays are no more special or holy than any others. After all, the Lord’s Day is the only holy day God has set apart for his New Covenant Church. We do not celebrate these days as in Roman Catholic theology, in which Advent is a time of penance to worthily celebrate Christmas, to make the soul a fit abode for the Redeemer coming in Holy Communion, and to be ready for the Lord’s final coming. This season’s somber note in Roman Catholicism is seen in the fact that In the Te Deum and the Gloria in excelsis, ancient hymns of praise, are not used in worship. Even marriage is forbidden.

Yet, because we can be swept up into consumerism it is helpful for us to pause and mediate during this time of year precisely why we even our culture celebrates Christmas—the coming of the eternal Son of God into our human flesh.

The Manner of Celebration
During Advent we are exhorted to profit from its celebration not in a dry, formal manner, but in participation and anticipation.

First, we join the patriarchs and prophets in participation, looking back upon the coming of our Lord in the flesh. Here we enter into their experience of longing for his coming as we sing the Psalms but also the great Advent hymns of the Church.

Second, we join the historic Christian Church in all times and in all places in anticipation, awaiting his coming again as we cry out, maranatha, our Lord come!

Thus Advent is a time for us to redeem the time (Eph. 5:16, KJV) in which we live and remember that our Lord has come and that he is coming again. It is a time for us to celebrate our redemption, to participate in it through Word and Sacrament, and to catechize our children in the mysteries of the Faith into which they were baptized.