12/12/2025
From a dear friend in north Jersey...
My reflection for the parish e-letter this week:
“Why don’t we sing Christmas carols in Church during Advent?” This is a question that people coming to the Episcopal Church from other Christian traditions sometimes wonder about. It’s a natural question when every store and restaurant is playing Christmas music and all the schools are holding their holiday concerts in mid-December.
The answer is that the Episcopal Church, along with other churches that follow the historic liturgical tradition (Lutheran, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox) understand that the purpose of Advent is to prepare for Christmas, not start celebrating it early. Our preparation is spiritual, and in Church we hear readings, pray prayers, and sing hymns that reflect the themes of Advent.
Traditionally, these themes are death, judgment, heaven, and hell; not exactly jolly! In recent decades the themes of hope, peace, joy, and love have sometimes been highlighted. The overarching purpose of Advent is to sit with the truth that Christ is the Lord of the universe, the cosmic King whose coming will set the world and her peoples to rights. The injustice we inflict upon one another; the sorrows of poverty, illness, and death; the misuse of worldly power; all is to be undone by the coming of Christ.
This began, of course, with the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem – the dawning of the hope of all the ages. And it will not be completed until Christ returns to fully heal and restore the world and human hearts, at a time of God’s own choosing. Advent, therefore, gives us double vision – looking to Jesus’ earthly human birth and also looking to his divine, cosmic return.
These are not themes that the world of malls and Black Friday shopping can cope with; but they are the truth and reality of the human condition, faith, and God’s sovereignty over the world – and we need every moment of Advent worship we can get to root ourselves in them.
Christmas will come – all twelve days of it until January 6th. We will celebrate Christ’s Nativity – the Feast of the Incarnation – with joy and delight and many hymns and carols. But for now, our prayer is “O come, O come, Emmanuel!”
