Advent in a Material World

I’ve had a most unusual preparation to the Advent season this year — much of it not very pleasant. As of this writing, I am still recuperating from back surgery with the hope of full restoration sometime in the near future — thanks in great part to your kind thoughts and prayers. But I am still grouchy; disturbed actually, by two things that I can’t seem to erase from my thoughts.

The first is a series of TV commercials for a large retailer with an overly “caffeinated” woman in a red sweat suit, who is beyond obsessed with shopping fever. She seems driven by some internal demon to commence her Christmas shopping marathon in time for December 25th. It could have been funny if it weren’t SO overdone, making the woman seem to be almost mentally imbalanced. And that’s not OK.

There’s even a worse advertisement series, by another retailer, that displays a disturbing “in-your-face” attitude even to Santa Claus himself! This TV commercial shows the shopper home on Christmas Eve, slyly eyeing Santa, who is unable to put even a single gift into the Christmas stockings—because they are already filled to the brim. She arrogantly offers Santa the empty stocking of the family dog for ‘leftover’ gifts which stuns and alienates Santa. She proudly turns to go off to bed remarking to Santa “…awkward…”

I realize advertising is very subjective and as a pastor I am hypersensitive to the way Christmas is portrayed in secular culture. I am all for giving gifts and am always happy to find wonderful gifts in affordable price ranges. I am all for being generous and understand the pressure that we put on ourselves to “get it all done.” But these commercials brought me to another place…if there’s no room for Santa to place his gifts in our stockings because we’ve already ‘got it all covered’ …I wonder……How can God give us what we won’t allow?

I wonder in our anxiety to hunker down and try to endure on-going, unprecedented, world economic times, if we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands.

I wonder if because our lives are ‘not back to normal’ we have bailed on God as our Sovereign, the giver of all gifts.

I wonder in our compulsive efforts to handle it all, solve it all and buy it all, we have gone astray from the path of God and jumped right back on the treadmill of self-importance and self-reliance.

I wonder what we’re teaching our children and our neighbors and our friends about God — when Advent and Christmas becomes a time just to ‘get through’ not a time to slow down, notice, observe and celebrate. I’m not saying Advent and Christmas-time is easy. For most of us it is a mixed time especially if we’ve had loss, illness or even intense disappointment in this last year. And for many the decreasing hours of daylight exacerbate that. But I think celebrating Christmas in the darkest 6 weeks of the year has a lot of purpose. If we observed Christmas in the light the spring or summer, how could we fully enjoy the beautiful lights of our trees, the candles in our windows and the sparkle in our children’s eyes?

In the warmth of Spring and Summer how could we fully notice, appreciate or enjoy the endless LIGHT that comes to us in the deepest dark, cold night? Friends, there are gifts from God to us waiting to be explored, shared and received; but only if we make space in our stockings and time in our lives to notice Emmanuel, God being with us.

Watching with you for Christ,
Jen