The Kitchen Sink
An occasional piece of paper
December 2, 2007
Vol. 10 no. 44

Everything But...
           Advent is a notoriously difficult season to pin down. Everybody points out how hard it is to keep Advent from sliding into a pre-Christmas season. Would the Church have been smarter not to have come up with the idea of Advent and begin the new Christian year on Christmas Day? Sure, December 23rd would be the 30th Sunday after Pentecost, but since nothing really happens during Advent, would anything be lost?
           I am not a fan of the “Advent police” who wish to suppress any mention or song or symbol of Christmas in the four Sundays before the manger. Much of that is rather pretentious, attempting to show how knowledgeable and liturgically savvy one is and one more instance of believing that setting up boundaries is the only way to demonstrate one’s identity. Advent was made for Christianity, not Christianity for Advent. Enough rant, Advent does an awful lot by doing nothing.
           The First Sunday of Advent, today, is the beginning of this year’s Christian story and we begin not with an event or an action, but by waiting and expecting. Waiting is considered one of the greatest sins of modern consumer culture. We can’t wait for Christmas, so Christmas is allowed to ooze backwards into the preceding weeks so that we won’t suffer from anticipatory anxiety. As a Christian, I believe we are on more solid ground when we are counter-cultural. The consumer world wants to buy Christmas now, but I’ll just wait.
           God’s best gift to humanity is that we don’t have to do anything to deserve God’s love; we are loved anyway. Advent is just that - doing nothing, knowing that in sacred time something will happen to us and for us.