The Right Reverend john davies
Sermons and Addresses.
An Advent Reflection
December 2009
Christians who express reservations about the early appearance of Christmas decorations and Santa’s Grotto in shops up and down our communities are often criticized as killjoys, spoiling what is, for many, the one really big celebration of the year.
Three or four weeks in, however, and ask some of those who criticise what they then think, and some will have changed their minds and will say that they are already fed up with it all: the relentless advertising, the incessant piped Christmas songs, the increasingly short tempers. Goodwill? Humbug! Can’t wait for it to be over.
The church is not entitled to exercise a ministry of random criticism, but can legitimately offer constructive comment. And it’s perfectly valid for the church to question the appropriateness of premature start to any important but potentially exhausting celebration, whether that celebration is secular religious. Better than that, however, the Church can offer something to combat the stress.
Christians do have the four weeks of Advent to put things into perspective and to reflect upon the coming of Emmanuel, God at home with his people, longing to guide them into ways of peace. They also have the 40 days between Christmas Day and Candlemas to continue to reflect on the Epiphanies – the revelations - of who the child of Bethlehem really is, and what following him can really make them.
As an alternative to criticism, let us be positive and maybe advertise open church doors during Advent and after December 25th, offering a quiet time, a refuge for exhausted bodies and tattered tempers. In such a way, perhaps our perspective on things might influence others in a more positive away than simply pointing the finger at them and saying they’re wrong to be trying to enjoy themselves.