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Dear Friends,

Writing a letter for a December issue of a church
magazine is always a strange task. For one
invariably writes it in the middle of November, as I
am just after Remembrance Sunday; and it is not
uncommon for the focus, quite understandably, to be on Christmas
and the birth of Jesus. But the consequence of all this is that one
skips over the season of Advent, moving quickly from autumn and
harvest festivals to the celebration of Christ’s birth.

And yet, the Church has long encouraged faithful followers to
spend the time leading up to Christmas as a time of preparation
and reflection, so that we might make ready, not just for the
celebration of our Saviour’s birth, but also for that time that is
coming, when he will return. Advent has become a religious season
that the Church has clung on to, in the face of a world that has
become less and less familiar with it.

Rachel Mann speaks of this in the introduction to her Advent and
Christmas devotional, In the Bleak Midwinter, when she writes,

Ours is a time when consumerism and conspicuous
consumption have become the norm.
Christmas – which, as a concept, has so dominated Advent in
the popular mind that Advent barely registers – has become
the defining focus for the consumption of ‘stuff’.
Advent – that great season of discipline, preparation and
fasting – has become so lost that if it registers at all in the
popular mind, it is as a kind of reverse of classic meanings
of Advent. Modern secular Advent means treating oneself to
‘foretastes’ of the feast, with barely restrained glee. Advent
calendars – as ways to mark time until the first day
of Christmas – have evolved into structured paths of
Indulgence; and such calendars today include not only
chocolate treats but sometimes gin, whisky, cheese and so
on.
At one level, this is all good knockabout fun; at another, it
frames ‘Advent time’ as ‘(self-)indulgent time’.

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