A Reflection for Advent
While our shopping centres are decked out earlier and earlier with Christmas decorations, a national charity says we have virtually lost the whole season of Advent as a preparation to the feast of Christmas itself. It urges us not to hold carol concerts or Christmas parties in what is really Advent, but to save them for the twelve days of Christmas proper.
The Prayer Book Society urges us to cease bingeing all the way through December and then stopping dead on 26th December. Instead, it argues, we should try to restore the importance of Advent as a penitential time of expectation.
The charity, which campaigns for the continued use of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, reminds us that the celebratory season of Christmas is supposed to start on Christmas Eve, and then wind down gradually until Twelfth Night, which should also be a celebration.
The Society points out that the terrible feeling of anticlimax which many experience on Boxing Day, surrounded by piles of discarded wrapping paper, cold turkey, and guilt about needing to go on a diet, is all because we now celebrate Christmas backwards. ‘While we realise that it’s never going to be possible for people to observe this completely, we do call upon churches and individual Christians not to forget the true nature of Advent, and to consider holding Christmas carol services and Christmas parties after 25 December,’ adds Miss Dailey.
The word Advent is derived from the Latin “adventus” (meaning ‘coming’). The season is observed in many Western Christian Churches, and is a time of expectant waiting and preparation for the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus at Christmas
Tony Butler
feature image: Red candles – WikiCommons (P.D.)