How Advent Saved Christmas

[rug]

Joy Netanya Moyal
Monday, 28 November 2011

There were a few years there when I hated Christmas. Sure, I could bop along with the rest of them to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” but I’d had it with the obligatory gift-giving and its accompanying pressure, the crowded parking lots and the way that Target, from Black Friday till New Year’s, becomes a living hell.

Everything—from cookie decorating and eggnog to “Silent Night”—felt tired and overly familiar and had a tinny hollowness to it. I’m not much into presents, so once I grew out of my childlike excitement over Cabbage Patch dolls, the glow of Christmas morning quickly faded.

But last year, something changed. Early in December, I dipped a toe into the season of Advent and ended up fully submerged and swimming in it. Advent—the time of waiting and anticipation leading up to Christmas—is a new concept for a born-and-bred Pentecostal like me. And as I’ve let myself be caught up in the current of longing and mystery, I’ve also realized that at Christmastime I am caught up in something much bigger than myself. This year, when I sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” or read the Magnificat, wonder surrounds me like a swirling mist as I ponder the mystery of God becoming man, and know that in the pondering itself I participate in an ancient ritual. How did I miss this before? How could I skate over Christmas for 25 years without tripping over the earth-rocking love that makes God become a helpless baby?

I came to this season of Advent hungry, and the sweet, melt-in-your-mouth morsels offered by a commercialized Christmas weren’t going to cut it. Strangely, everything I read about Advent intensified my hunger instead of satisfying it. In her poem “After Annunciation,” Madeleine L’Engle writes:

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child.

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/deeper-walk/blog/27430-how-advent-saved-christmas

[edhopper]

1. Yes

"This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child."

Let us celebrate our irrationality, ignorance and illogic.
Let us not let critical thinking get in the way of a good story, no matter how ludicrous it may be.
Let us revel in fair tales, because they "feel" better than truth.

[rug]

3. Your version doesn't scan well.

[edhopper]

4. I chose accuracy

over poetry

[rug]

5. And there you are in a nutshell.

I hope your accuracy is truly accurate. It would be a shame if you if you chose wrong.

[edhopper]

6. As opposed to your

warm fussy feelings with no evidence or logic.

[rug]

8. No, I just drift through life like a dandelion seed.

[NMMNG]

9. Whatever you say, Pascal

[sudopod]

10. Oh, Hell...no?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_L'Engle#Religious_beliefs

L'Engle was an Episcopalian and believed in universal salvation, writing that "All will be redeemed in God's fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones."<12> As a result of her promotion of Christian universalism, many Christian bookstores refused to carry her books, which were also frequently banned from Christian schools and libraries. However, some of her most secular critics attacked her work for being too religious.<13>

Her views on divine punishment were similar to those of George MacDonald, who also had a large influence on her fictional work. She said "I cannot believe that God wants punishment to go on interminably any more than does a loving parent. The entire purpose of loving punishment is to teach, and it lasts only as long as is needed for the lesson. And the lesson is always love."

[Book Lover]

2. "How did I miss this before?"

Maybe because your Protestantism told you everything Catholic was evil?

Oh you Christians!

[dtexdem]

7. Well, I grew up Catholic and knew all about Advent:

shopping season!