Enjoy a Sappy Christmas by Having Actual Advent

Last updated on: December 2, 2016 at 8:48 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

Enjoy a Sappy Christmas by Having Actual Advent 2016-12-02T08:48:07-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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When it is time to party, then party, but not until then.
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By the time Christmas comes some people are tired of sappiness and feel happiness when they can stop with the Holiday cheer. Partly, this is due to the Scrooge that lives in every human heart that must be boiled in a holiday pudding and have a stake of holly driven through this wickedness in our hearts. Mostly, the weariness is justified, because we skip Advent and go straight to Christmas.

This is like missing Lent and complaining about the size of the feast on Easter. Of course all that chocolate, lamb, and pastry is tiresome if you always eat chocolate, lamb and pastry daily, but after a fast, the party is most welcome.

So it is with Christmas: the Advent fast prepares the way for the party and makes us fit to bow at the manger and see Jesus born. Only when we have walked from the pasture to Bethlehem can we see Jesus: skipping the walk is not possible. There is no way to Skype into the stable. You have to be out in the cold, tending the sheep God has given you, and then He will come.

We must be ready to run to the stable and we cannot have had a month and a half of Christmas cookies before Christmas comes. We will get Twelve Days to party and then party we must, but nobody can eat treats for thirty days without even the best sweetmeat becoming rancid:

The full soul loatheth a honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.

The Church was wise and gave us time to reflect before Christmas on the consequence of missing Christ’s First Coming: being unfit, unready, and unhappy at His Second Coming. The Baby born in Bethlehem to bring joy and peace waits to see who will love justice, but when He returns, it will be as King and Judge. Justice will roll down on us and we best be prepared. As a result, themes of judgement, warnings about Hell fire, all with the hope of Christmas dominate Advent. The news is very good, but we could ignore the good news and so receive judgement on ourselves.

Read the prophets today, men like Nahum, and remind yourself that God loves the poor and hates those that cheat them. He loves mercy and will judge violent cities that pervert justice. Nahum rebuked the power of Assyria when she was at the height of her power, because the prophet knew that no power under Heaven could stand the slow, but sure judgement of Heaven. God might let evil men prosper for a time, fulfilling His complex purposes, but judgement day is coming.

Nahum is a just man and so can rejoice in coming judgement. The rest of us should repent and prepare. We want to be fit for the Christ who came, who is, and who is coming. To be unprepared is to lose the joy of Christmas past, this Christmas, and the great Christmas that will end time.

Let’s take the medicine of Advent so as to be strong enough to dance with joy in Christmastide.

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