Is there any joy in the Christmas insanity?

So what do we make of this silly season we call the lead up to Christmas? Our TV’s radios and junkmail are yelling at us, ‘buy, buy, buy!’ and we groan one more time as we frantically try and fit in another meeting and get our last scraps of work done before the office closes for the Christmas break, and we lament the calendar that tells us we will no longer see our home except to lay our heads on our pillows at night because we have yet another gathering to attend.

Does this kind of thing give you much joy at all! I find it interesting that the majority of people I talk to don’t find any joy in these activities at all, in fact they can’t wait until it’s all over. So why on earth do we subject ourselves to such grueling and painful rituals? Because it’s tradition? Because that’s what is expected of us culturally? I suspect we’ve lost the meaning of tradition to an extent and in fact we no longer even acknowledge the traditions that were supposed to bring us life, hope and joy in the Christmas season. The traditions we subject ourselves to and desperately try to keep up with today have been around less than 100 years.

Let me draw your attention to another tradition. These weeks leading into Christmas is called advent. The fist Sunday of advent (last Sunday) is traditionally the beginning of the church year. It is also the beginning of the 40 days leading up to the feast of Epiphany, the day of celebration when new believers were baptized. There are a little over 4 weeks in the advent season when believers are called to a time of praying and fasting. It is actually a time to slow down and prepare for the coming of Christ. Very countercultural to the 21st century, maybe shopping centre advertising wasn’t so aggressive 1600 years ago.

For me advent is a time of slowing down long enough to recognize that actually, Christ is among us. It is only in the slowing down that we can acknowledge this and truly sense the hope, joy, peace and love we celebrate for the Christmas season. Next time to bump past someone in the shopping centres in your frantic Christmas rush, remember this pondering from the late Archbishop Oscar Romero:

‘Advent should admonish us to discover in each brother and sister that we greet, in each friend whose hand we shake, in each beggar who asks for bread, in each worker who wants to use the right to join a union, in each peasant who looks for work in the coffee groves, the face of Christ. Then it would not be possible to rob them, to cheat them, to deny them their rights. They are Christ, and whatever is done to them, Christ will take as done to him. This is what Advent is: Christ living among us.’

Shalom
Mark Riessen