Is everybody ready?
Are you getting ready?
Are you waiting with anticipation?
Contrary to all the hoopla on TV and other media, it is NOT Christmas, nor is it the Christmas season. The season of Christmas begins on December 25th.
This is Advent, the start of the Christian liturgical year, a time of preparation for the coming of the incarnate God, that is, Jesus.
Everyone is in such a rush these days to get to the finish, that too often the process is overlooked. Gotta get rich FAST! Gotta get married NOW! Gotta get a house NOW! Gotta get whatever fancy catches the eye, IMMEDIATELY!
I remember Carly Simon's song (later used in a ketchup commercial) "Anticipation." Waiting seems to be so passe these days. Whatever happened to delayed gratification (a sign, once upon a time, of maturity)?
I understand why clothing designers have to show their lines six or seven months in advance; time must be available to manufacture the choices of the retail buyers (that's not consumers, by the by, folks). Why do the stores, though, have to have clothing in stock two or three months before it will be useful? Who wants to shop for a bathing suit in February or March (unless a vacation is imminent)?
I think there would be fewer complaints about the winter doldrums if the seasons weren't so rushed. Christmas has twelve days, ending as Epiphany begins, a season that lasts until Ash Wednesday. Now there's a season that has been totally forgotten, except in a few places down South that use it to segue into Mardi Gras.
Okay, granted that Lent is a quiet, reflective season, marked by eating the remains of the previous harvest and cold weather (in most of North America). It doesn't have to be joyless, of course. People never need to be joyless, especially when they can share in the abundance of this nation, and live in the knowledge of the grace of God.
Just as Advent prepares us for the incarnation, Lent prepares us for the even greater gift of salvation, and ultimately for the gift of the spirit of God (Pentecost, FYI).
The Christian calendar is not biblical, just as the Bible is fabulous in many respects. But the seasons provide a rhythm for living, and have the power to remind all of God's children how to respect the creation, including the planet Earth, our island home.
The seasons outlined in the liturgy of the Christian church sprang from the seasons of the northern hemisphere; perhaps that should be reckoned with and adjusted in the southern hemisphere. Jesus wasn't born on December 25th, so maybe the folks down under should go about the pentecostal ministry of the church during their summer. Now that would be a puzzle in the global community, one I am not fitted to solve.
I bid you a thoughtful Advent.
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