I begin this morning with a confession. I confess that I find it very difficult to observe the season of Advent. Here in church, we show restraint by waiting to decorate the church with festive colors and greenery, and we don’t start singing Christmas carols until Christmas Day. But out in the world, people are having Christmas parties and spreading holiday cheer. Outside these walls, everyone else will tell you it’s the most wonderful time of the year.
But when we come to church during the Advent season, we have to ignore all that. Even though Christmas is just around the corner—some of you may feel like you’re ready for Christmas to be over already—it seems like everything we do in church is a reminder that it isn’t Christmas yet. Soon enough we’ll be singing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” but for now we’re still singing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”
It’s not easy to observe Advent. But it is easy to get caught up in the nostalgic and saccharine side of Christmas. Who doesn’t love chestnuts roasting on an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at your nose? Whose heart isn’t warmed by thought of parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting, and caroling out in the snow?
The thing is, it really takes no effort at all to encounter the warm and fuzzy side of Christmas. It’s everywhere you look. Holiday music is in the air, and cars with reindeer antlers are zipping down the streets. Even our coffee drinks get transformed at Christmastime. I recently saw an advertisement for Starbucks that had the words Comfort & Joy printed in bold letters. Underneath the word Comfort was a gingerbread latte. Underneath the word Joy was a peppermint mocha. Everywhere we turn, the message is reinforced: Christmas is fun. Christmas feels good.
Now, for those of you who think this is a prelude to yet another rant against the secularization of Christmas, it’s not. Someone asked me the other day what I think about the “War on Christmas.” I tried to brush the question aside, because I really have no interest in those kinds of debates. I really couldn’t care less if the person ringing up my socks at the register wishes me a “merry Christmas” or “happy holiday.” And I certainly don’t think that there’s any grand conspiracy by the media or the liberal elite who are trying to brainwash us or criminalize Christian holidays.
I’ll tell you what I am worried about, though. I’m worried about sentimentality. Sentimentality is the biggest threat to the true meaning of Christmas. And our greatest enemy isn’t the secular media or lawmakers. It’s ourselves. We Christians sentimentalize Christmas in thought, word, and deed, and we do it in countless, subtle ways.
We sentimentalize Christmas because the actual story of the Nativity isn’t quite as comforting as we’d like it to be. Virtually every aspect of the story grates against modern sensibilities. The actual Christmas narrative takes an unmarried, Jewish refugee couple—two people at the margins of society—and places them at the center of the story. In the Gospel accounts, Joseph is praised for his chastity, and we’re asked to believe that a virgin became pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit.
The child she gives birth to is the foretold Messiah, the one who will save Israel, but there’s no grand celebration. The angels announce this glorious birth, not to the religious leaders or the wealthy elites, but to shepherds—a group of hired hands who are looked down upon by virtually everyone else in society. When King Herod heard the rumors of this baby’s birth, he ordered the deaths of all male children under two years of age in the entire region of Bethlehem, just to make sure that there would be no threat to his throne.
The real Christmas story isn’t warm and fuzzy. It’s far too violent, too judgmental, and too Jewish for our modern tastes. So, what do we do? We sanitize it. We universalize it. We add more cute animals. Christians have been working on this for the last 2,000 years, and we’ve become pretty good at it.
I came across a recent article on the true meaning of Christmas, written by a priest in a diocesan newsletter. In this article, the priest explains, “The Christmas story is not just about Jesus.”[1] Now, let me pause right there. Notice that this priest didn’t say, “The Christmas story is not about Jesus.” He said, “The Christmas story is not just about Jesus.” Okay, fine, I think to myself.
The article continues: “it’s also a mythic tale that has something to say about all of us.” Still true, I suppose, but I see red flags on the horizon.
He explains that the only way the Christmas story can speak to us today is if we understand it mythically. He writes, “[the Christmas story] shifts to become a lens through which we see our own miraculous arrival, both literally, as babies, and spiritually, as we become the people God made us to be. I was a sign of hope, when I was born; the angels watched over me, and celebrated; my presence has changed the world, forever. Now that’s something to chew on over Christmas dinner.”
I’ve been chewing on this ever since I read the article, and I still have indigestion. I’m reminded of G.K. Chesterton’s poignant remark that “A heresy is always a half-truth turned into a whole falsehood.”[2] This priest is only giving us a half-truth. The story of Christmas isn’t just about Jesus; it’s also about us. Yes. But that version of the Christmas story isn’t really about Jesus or us. It’s another attempt to turn Christmas into a sentimental idea, or a feeling, which is another way of saying it’s not really about anything.
This is what I mean when I say that we Christians are our own worst enemy when it comes to Christmas. I think that if you were to ask every Christian in America, “What is the true meaning of Christmas?” you’d probably hear lots of answers like “love,” and “peace,” and “family.”
Far be it from me to speak against love, peace, and family, but I’m here to tell you that those things are not, in fact, the meaning of Christmas. The problem with those answers is not that they are bad things. The problem with those answers is that they’re ideas. They’re concepts. And concepts can’t save us. The Gospels don’t say, “God so loved the world, that he gave us a really great concept.”
The message of Christmas is not any of these abstract ideas or feelings. The message of Christmas is that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), and because of Jesus, our Immanuel, we can truly say that “God is with us” (Matt. 1:23). As the angel declared to Joseph in today’s Gospel reading, “you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).
I said a moment ago that sentimentality is the biggest threat to the true meaning of Christmas. If that’s true, then the greatest antidote to sentimentality is the season of Advent—the season we’re in right now. The season that, I confess, is very hard to observe.
But there’s a reason that Advent is so somber. It’s no accident that the hymns we sing during Advent sound different from the exuberant carols of Christmas. Advent looks forward with hopeful expectation but still acknowledges that there is longing, and hurting, and brokenness in the world. This longing is perfectly captured in that Advent hymn, “O come, o come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear.”[3] We are waiting for the Son of God to appear, and in the meantime our reality is described as “lonely exile.”
Or, if your musical tastes favor the 20th century instead of the Middle Ages, we might think of Simon and Garfunkel’s arrangement of “Silent Night.” While the duo’s angelic voices harmonize the words of the well-known Christmas carol, “all is calm, all is bright […] sleep in heavenly peace,” we also the hear the voice of a broadcaster reading a 7 o’clock news bulletin, from August 3, 1966. The events described in the bulletin include a dispute in the House of Representatives over the civil rights bill, the grand jury indictment of mass murderer Richard Speck, and anti-Vietnam War protests outside the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee. It’s a powerful juxtaposition, and it also serves as a reminder that the “lonely exile” people were feeling in 1966 isn’t all that different from today. We were in Advent then, and we’re in Advent now.
Advent is the season of realism. If you often find yourself thinking that Christians too often sound like Pollyanna, then Advent is for you. Advent is comfortable with the things that sentimentality cannot tolerate. Sentimentality doesn’t know what to do with depression, grief, anxiety, and heartbreak, so it covers them up and looks the other way. Advent embraces them and says, “God is with us.”
That’s the strange thing about Advent. It declares that God has come into the world, in the person of Jesus Christ. It says, “God is with us,” but it doesn’t say that everything is better now. It acknowledges that God has unfinished business, and that we are waiting. Things don’t always make sense; we can’t always discern what God is doing in our lives. As the poet Elizabeth Jennings once described it, “This is the season of right doubt / While that elected child waits to be born.”[4]
Mary and Joseph didn’t know what was in store for them, either. And it’s not as if everything suddenly made sense to them when Jesus was born. After raising him and protecting him throughout his life, Mary eventually watched her son die a horrible death at the hands of an angry mob. Her son was the Savior of the world, but that was probably little consolation while she watched him suffer. Mary and Joseph trusted God’s promises, but their entire lives were lived in Advent.
And we will live our entire lives in Advent, too. But the reason we have hope is because God has declared that this world is coming to an end. And by “this world,” I mean the world as know it today—a world that thrives on selfishness, that exploits fear and hatred, that substitutes revenge for justice; a world that’s plagued with sin, sickness, and death. That world is coming to an end, because it’s a world of darkness, and as St. John’s Gospel declares, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).
The world still seems dark to us, but we’re here this morning because we have heard the good news. We have heard about a light in the midst of the darkness. The old world is coming to an end, and a new one is on the horizon.
I’m reminded here of the concluding words of T.S. Eliot’s dark and haunting poem, “The Hollow Men.” Eliot writes: “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but with a whimper.” I have no idea if this is what he meant by those words, but I can’t help but hear the whimper of a newborn baby, lying in a manger. “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but with a whimper.” It turns the meaning on its head, I admit, but it reminds us that even in the darkness, God has sent us a Savior. What sounds like a whimper is actually the sound of hope. The old world is ending; the new is beginning.
And here we are, in Advent, between those two worlds. And so we wait, and we sing, “O come, o come, Emmanuel.”
[1] Brian E. Pearson, “It’s Our Nativity Too,” Niagara Anglican, December 2019, p. 12 https://niagaraanglican.ca/newspaper/docs/2019/dec.pdf.
[2] America, November 9, 1935.
[3] The Hymnal 1982, #56.
[4] Elizabeth Jennings, “November Sonnet.”
The Rev. Dr. Stewart Clem is associate professor of moral theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis and theologian in residence at the Church of St. Michael & St. George.
